


I, who was chosen by love, begin to moonwalk

by zimriya



Series: kindling [1]
Category: NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Beta Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten, Canon Compliant, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimriya/pseuds/zimriya
Summary: In the beginning, Ten told himself it was only until Yukhei presented.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Series: kindling [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573561
Comments: 34
Kudos: 398





	I, who was chosen by love, begin to moonwalk

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I do not go here I’m so sorry I just don’t know. This is probably wildly OOC but I DON’T EVEN GO HERE I’M SO SORRY I JUST DON’T KNOW. I’ve basically shipped this since literally early 2019—before WayV, before SuperM, before there was any reason besides “Lucas is my favorite and Ten’s my second favorite; oh they’re gonna be in a subunit?; they should totally kiss” and I’m terrified that I have no idea what I’m doing but, yeah, here it is, 20,000+ words of Luten ABO AU. 
> 
> I’d like to thank Hexmen, who went from being like “I support your favorites in NCT, Nat,” to “Hello tell me more about Luten, Nat” to “if you want to write ten thousand words of Luten ABO I will beta it for you no problem, Nat.” I'd also like to thank Scar, who sat through two panic attacks re: WAIT WHAT NAMES DO I USE OH GOD and also WAIT HOW GOOD AT MANDARIN ARE TEN AND LUCAS _OH GOD_ with infinite patience. Kinah gets an honorable mention for reading this despite not knowing anything about WayV or SuperM at all. I'm stalling.
> 
> Title from “Moonwalk” by WayV.

In the beginning, Ten told himself it was only until Yukhei presented. That made sense. Yukhei was… is… so quintessentially alpha on a purely physical level that it wasn’t really a question so much as it was a waiting. Yukhei passed his SM audition by looking like a model, and he was already well on his way to giant-hood in 2015.

When they met—really met; not bows and passing each other in the halls or sitting in the same cafeteria eating the same foreign food—two years later, working on “Dream in a Dream,” Yukhei was even larger still and no less charming. His English was substandard. His Korean was barely passable. He spoke Mandarin with a heavy Cantonese accent, and he seemed to be floating by on charisma and good looks alone. Unfortunately, not even one year of fame had desensitized Ten to that sort of thing. Yukhei was loud and handsome, where a lot of the other trainees were polite and pretty. It didn’t help that Yukhei has always been what society looks for in an alpha—what _Ten_ always looks for in an alpha. 

Looked for.

That was 2017, when Ten was still looking for alphas. (Wanting to be an alpha; settling for fucking alphas; confused and twenty-two and small and pretty and not quite _enough_ for himself, not fully _happy_.)

Yukhei was nineteen in 2017, but really only eighteen, and he hadn’t presented yet. He still somehow smelled nondescript underneath all the overconfidence and body spray and nerves. Yukhei had dimples when he smiled and could wrap one hand around both of Ten’s wrists with room to spare.

It was inevitable that he ended up in Ten’s bed.

It was only supposed to be until he presented, until he turned out to be an alpha, and got bored of fucking around with a beta.

It was not supposed to keep happening.

Ten is twenty-four, about to debut for what he thinks is the fifth time (if U with Taeyong counts, but then, it’s the sixth time, because “Black on Black”) and Yukhei is still in his bed.

Ruining him.

Smelling nondescript.

Ten holds tight to that fact, because doing otherwise means he’s gone back on his word; let something that was supposed to be meaningless turn into stupidity. Yukhei isn’t an alpha, Yukhei isn’t a beta, Yukhei is certainly not an omega, and Ten is fine.

Ten is handling it.

Ten is in America, part of SuperM, they’ve been there for almost a week for their official debut and Yukhei is—

It’s Mark who notices, coming into their massive living room with Ten on his heels and scrunching up his nose. “Hey, Lucas,” he says, eyeing Yukhei on the sofa.

The whole house smells wrong, and not like someone’s lit a candle to cover up something, but still just as sickeningly sweet. Ten feels a little lightheaded.

Yukhei seems to be utterly unaffected, sprawled rather decadently across the sofa with his nose buried in his phone. He doesn’t look up when Mark speaks, even though Ten can tell it’s not because he hasn’t heard or doesn’t have the words to respond. 

“Are you—” Mark stops, sounding like he can’t quite believe he has to finish the sentence, and almost like he can’t quite believe he’s actually _started_ the sentence.

“In heat,” finishes Taemin-hyung from behind both of them, and everyone sans Yukhei startles.

Ten’s heart stutters in his chest and he has to take a few bracing breaths, the cloy of pheromones working their way past the soft palate of his mouth.

“Sorry,” Taemin-hyung says, with only mild contrition—Ten can smell it on him, his intentions and his half-apology, underneath all the usual everyday stuff, like that he’s tired, working too hard, and an unbonded, unmated omega—before turning his gaze back to Yukhei.

“Ah?” Yukhei says, in that tone Ten knows from experience means he understands, but is trying to get out of having to speak more Korean anyway.

“You’re in heat,” Taemin-hyung explains, and then looks to Ten beseechingly.

Ten could just strangle Yukhei for this, but he translates the sentence into Mandarin clumsily anyway, not meeting anyone’s eyes. His accent is stronger than usual, his diction less than perfect. No one but Yukhei would notice, and he’s too busy staring. Ten can feel his gaze on him like a magnifying glass.

“Ah.” Yukhei seems to be mulling it all over; this time his tone is more honest-stalling than faked-confusion. “That explains the fever. I made Manager go out to get me, uh, painkillers, I think—”

Mark makes a noise, no doubt worried about Manager-hyung’s likelihood of coming back with what Yukhei actually asked for.

“I thought I was just getting sick. The desire to be on your dick is a pretty regular thing, at this point, so,” Yukhei adds, and shrugs. It takes Ten a horrifying few seconds to realize he’s said that entire last bit in Mandarin.

“What?” he can’t help but reply, even as Mark and Taemin-hyung are looking between them curiously. “I mean, uh—”

“I’m in heat,” Yukhei says in Korean, repeating the words back slowly at Taemin-hyung like he’s asking for confirmation.

Taemin-hyung smiles. “Definitely,” he says. “I’m surprised you didn’t, erm, notice.” He makes an uncomfortable looking gesture and flushes, eyes darting around the room.

Ten half-laughs, high and nervous, as he follows Taemin-hyung’s line of sight to Yukhei’s unfairly pert ass and then allows that train of thought to reach certain heat symptoms. Now that he thinks about it—now that he can’t help but _breathe in for it—_ he can definitely smell it. And Ten’s a beta, and barely passable on Jacobson’s tests. (It’s why it took Yukhei so long to work his way into his bed in the first place; why Ten’s always gone after extra-alpha alphas; less guesswork.)

“Do you wanna—” Taemin-hyung stops, clearly a little uncertain. He’s still not used to not being the maknae.

“I should. Doctor?” says Yukhei, struggling with basic sentence structure and rather helpfully trying to mime.

“No,” the three of them chorus, like perfectly trained superstars.

“I have suppressants,” Taemin-hyung continues, miming throwing back pills in case Yukhei doesn’t know the word. There’s fat chance of that—Ten thinks basic birth control was covered before he’d so much as signed on the dotted line back in 2013—but the gesture is helpful nonetheless. “And—ah—tools—” There’s more miming, this time accompanied by a rather noticeable flush to the rims of Taemin-hyung’s ears.

Ten could just die, knowing what that word is in Korean. 

“Come on.” Taemin-hyung moves forward to take Yukhei by the wrist, and the stark differences in their everything are all the more apparent. Yukhei is taller, almost the _tallest_ , and Taemin-hyung’s hand looks tiny resting on his arm. “Lucas?”

Yukhei stands, clamoring to his feet with a great commotion, and throwing over a wave of pheromones that has Mark taking an involuntary step towards him and Ten—stupid, stupid, stupid beta _Ten—_ grabbing him by the arm with a growl.

“Yeah, okay,” Yukhei says, with the informality and flippancy that better skill in Korean is soon going to rob him of. He moves to follow Taemin-hyung, leaving behind some… questionable stains on the sofa that Ten is pretending he can’t see nor smell. “Hey.” He visibly brightens, walking in stride with Taemin-hyung towards Taemin-hyung’s room. “Do you think this will help me get Yunho-sunbaenim’s number?”

Ten doesn’t hear Taemin-hyung’s response, because the two of them vanish behind Taemin-hyung’s door, the slam loud in the sudden silence.

For a moment, he and Mark just stand in the quiet, clearly not sure what to do. Then Mark clears his throat. “Not it,” he says in English, one finger to his nose. He then swaps languages flawlessly. “I’m not telling Taeyong-hyung—”

That’s right, someone has to tell Taeyong, NCT’s fearless leader, and then Kun, because WayV. And their managers—someone is going to have to tell Kim Youngmin-seonsaengnim; Lee Sooman-seonsaengnim himself will have to be briefed about Yukhei’s updated _status_ , as it were.

“Why do I—”

“Not it,” Mark says again, and turns and flees towards his and Ten’s room.

Ten is left standing by himself in the empty, massive living room, with the couch that smells suspiciously like everything he’s ever wanted in his life. He stays there for a long, long time.

Eventually Taeyong emerges and joins him, and Ten stammers his way through an update—“Lucas is an omega, now? Taemin-hyung is helping?”—and somehow manages to keep it together for the rest of the day.

They don’t see Yukhei for the rest of the day either, because thankfully they’ve already finished all their American schedules for the day. At one point Taemin-hyung emerges to confer with several manager-hyungs, and then they return with awkwardly shaped plastic bags and long-suffering resignation and _Ten_ _stops paying attention_.

Yukhei isn’t in heat the next day when they’re getting ready for their final day of schedules, and Ten tells himself that’s a good thing. He doesn’t want to think about what he must have had to do for that to be the case, doesn’t want to care.

He does care. 

“You, uh. They say it’s not good to suppress the first one,” he says awkwardly in Mandarin as they wait for Taeyong to finish sorting through his luggage next to the front door. They’re due to the car soon, minus Jongin-hyung and Baekhyun-hyung, who’ve already left. There’s no need for the secrecy. Everyone knows, having celebrated about it over late, late dinner last evening. Baekhyun-hyung even showed up to Yukhei’s door with fucking yellow poppies and everything. But Ten’s not willing to risk potential torment.

“I didn’t,” Yukhei replies, utterly unbothered, but honoring Ten’s language choice at least. “Take suppressants, I mean.”

It’s likely that’s a loanword, since Taemin-hyung and even Mark look more than a little knowing. But maybe they’re just used to designation-talk in Mandarin. Ten supposes he’s lucky Baekhyun-hyung and Jongin-hyung aren’t around; they’re in a band with a Chinese subunit also.

“There’s more than one way to end a heat,” Yukhei continues helpfully, and then has the gall to waggle his fingers.

Ten stares at him blankly, heart pounding.

“Let’s go,” Manager-hyung says, eyeing Taemin-hyung dubiously. “You’re the leader for today.”

Taemin-hyung shoves him, eyes rolling, but he and the rest of them shuffle out the door for their final day in Los Angeles regardless.

“Are you sure you’re okay—”

“Ten-hyung,” Yukhei says patiently, expression suddenly very serious. “I’m fine.” He’s speaking Korean so the entire van is staring at them and Ten could just burst into flames.

“Right, well.” He refuses to meet anyone else’s eyes. “Your mother calls me.”

And that’s enough to get the van teasing—little baby Lucas, who took a full two extra years to turn into a real boy, whose mother calls his hyungs because she worries her baby isn’t eating enough and that’s why.

In the airport after schedules Taemin-hyung forgets his phone and doesn’t notice for an embarrassingly amazing amount of time, and Mark films the whole thing. Taemin-hyung puts it on Instagram and finds it hilarious. Yukhei wears a snapback and does peace signs.

Everything is normal.

Ten breathes.

* * *

Yukhei does actually get Yunho-sunbaenim’s phone number. He’s remarkably proud of this fact, spending the better half of their first day back bragging about it. It’s not that big of a deal. Plenty of other people have his number, like Taemin-hyung, Baekhyun-hyung, and Jongin-hyung. Yuta-hyung has his number, although he’s literally only used it once and only to introduce himself again and apologize. (Ten remembers their first meeting, how Yuta-hyung walked straight into a wall and nearly cracked his nose open; how Changmin-hyung had stared at them all, blankly, and then totally tried to murder them with his eyes.) 

Even Taeyong has his number—Taeyong who spends the better half of their first day back bringing this up constantly, when SuperM aren’t at schedules or visiting the SuperM popup store.

“Yes, but that’s different,” Yukhei explains that evening, for what feels like the hundredth time it’s come up in casual conversation.

Ten is starting to think it might just be because Yukhei’s figured out how to say “I have Yunho-sunbaenim’s number” in near-perfect Korean, and not actual bragging or arrogance. He does that sometimes, defaults to sentences he knows will go over well, and more often than not everyone around them thinks it cute. (Ten does too, but Ten thinks a lot of things Yukhei does are cute; it’s a problem; he’s not thinking about it at the moment.)

Ten’s not sure why Taeyong is even here, having dragged Donghyuck along with him to come harass WayV in their dorm, but he’s not about to question it. Taeyong looks exhausted and like he hasn’t really stopped crying; if he wants to nag WayV, Ten will let him nag WayV.

Hendery and Yangyang are skulking around in the kitchen and Kun, Sicheng, and Dejun have made themselves scarce elsewhere—probably retreated back into their rooms. So far, all _Donghyuck_ has done is watch their television and update Mark with running commentary on the argument through KakaoTalk, seemingly unbothered by the fact that he’s in the full NCT group chat and everyone can see.

Ten glances down at his phone where Mark’s written, `lol but I mean this is the first celebrity number Lucas has gotten, right?` in glaring English to a chorus of groans, more than a few insistences that Donghyuck just stop talking, and also one particularly sarcastic, `Minhyung-ssi? Korean, please`, from Doyoung.

Ten sighs. 

“How is that different?” Taeyong says, lips pulled down in a frown. “You’re saying you have his number, but I have his number too.” 

Ten didn’t know he had such a hardon for Yunho-sunbaenim. 

“That’s because you and Yunho-sunbaenim did that song together,” Yukhei explains patiently, somehow still perfectly intelligible despite the late hour. His words are always a little slurred together but it’s particularly bad at night, when his higher thought functions have abandoned him. “I have Yunho-sunbaenim’s number because we both—” He stops, clearly not sure how to finish that sentence, and Ten wagers it’s not just the language barrier.

“Go ass up for great big alpha cocks?” pipes up Donghyuck helpfully from his corner, and really, he is the only one currently present who could dare, being an omega.

Hendery or Dejun also could have, if they’d been alone, but the fuckers are hiding from NCT’s illustrious leader and his… sidekick? Ten’s still not sure what Donghyuck is even here for, and Taeyong ordering him into a five-minute time-out a moment later is even less illuminating. 

Donghyuck actually goes to take his punishment without protest, but he still shouts loudly about how Taeyong knows he isn’t actually their aging father and is in fact only twenty-six.

Taeyong just glares back at him and refuses to refer to him as anything other than “Haechan” until Donghyuck grudgingly apologizes and returns to staring angrily at the wall.

Yukhei is entirely unfazed. “What Donghyuck said,” he says happily. “It’s different. Yunho-sunbaenim and I have a bond.”

No one says anything about that bond being rooted in the love of great big alpha cocks, but even Taeyong looks like he’s thinking it this time.

“Right, so, are you going to use it?” Ten asks, because clearly it’s up to him to even try to steer this conversation.

Yukhei gives him his full attention with a stunning smile. “Yes,” he says. “But you need to help me.”

Taeyong is making a sour face like he’s still upset that someone other than him has a reason to contact U-Know Yunho-sunbaenim about anything, and Ten feels a stress headache starting between his eyes.

“Right, that’s our cue—come on, Hyung, you gave him the number, it’s time to go—”

“But Donghyuck—”

“Bye, Ten-hyung. Lucas-hyung.”

Yukhei gives Donghyuck a startled, genuinely happy smile, as he always does when he’s reminded that there are people in the group who are younger than him. Ten would laugh at him, since most of WayV are younger than Yukhei, but that’s too much effort.

“Why do I have to help you?” he whines as Taeyong and Donghyuck let themselves out. “Can’t you just do it by yourself?”

“I need you to translate for me,” Yukhei says, still soldiering on in Korean even though it’s just them and the rest of WayV.

“Can’t you use your phone?” Ten complains, even as he gets up to follow Yukhei towards his and Sicheng’s room.

Sicheng looks up when they come in and has the intelligence to grab his laptop and relocate, eyes only rolling slightly as he goes. He and Ten share one of those looks—the only good thing to come out of being a beta—as he goes.

“I was thinking maybe we’d video,” Yukhei explains, as he sits down on his unmade bed and kicks at the covers to make room. “Or… I dunno.” He seems much less brave now that they’re alone, and he’s holding the phone so hard that his knuckles are white.

“What country are they in?” Ten says helpfully, taking pity on him and coming to sit down. He tugs Yukhei’s hand with the phone towards him so he can see the app, tapping through his contacts page until he finds the new addition in question; `U-Know Yunho-hyung` oh so helpfully already keyed in as a custom contact name.

“Oh, ah, dunno, Japan,” Yukhei says, clearly actually having known, based on the immediateness of his response. “Why?”

Ten shrugs. It doesn’t really matter which country TVXQ-sunbaenims are in, he supposes, since there’s no time difference. But they’ve got a huge tour in a month and he’d think they’d be too busy practicing for whatever it is Yukhei wants to call Yunho-sunbaenim over. Assurance, maybe? They could just go bother Donghae-hyung. Donghae-hyung’s much less terrifying than Yunho-sunbaenim. Ten has permission to call Yunho-sunbaenim “Yunho-hyung” but he’s still not able to do it when it isn’t to his face, and even that’s only because the man looks so sad whenever he doesn’t. Ten doesn’t feel afraid to call Donghae-hyung “Donghae-hyung,” and Donghae-hyung could give Yukhei advice.

Although maybe it wouldn’t be as strong, coming from someone whose designation isn’t known by the entire world. Yunho-sunbaenim is as good as married to Changmin-hyung, and everyone in their fanclub knows it.

Maybe they should just go bother Donghyuck, or Hendery, or, Dejun, or, well. Ten supposes he gets it. Most of the omegas in NCT and WayV have only been omegas for months, now that Ten thinks about it. They’d be better off getting advice from Taemin-hyung.

But half the time Taemin-hyung still doesn’t even feel like a real hyung. Also, he’s nothing like Yukhei, not that Yunho-sunbaenim is more like Yukhei, just… Yunho-sunbaenim isn’t subtle about who he is anymore. Not after sixteen years and being publicly in a relationship. Ten doesn’t think Yukhei has ever been subtle once in his life, and once he finds someone—a pretty girl alpha, or a boy even—he’s not going to be the type to hide it. Even if SM would want him to. Even if Yukhei would want to. Yunho-sunbaenim will have good advice about that sort of thing, once Ten stops dragging his feet and actually helps Yukhei get through the conversation.

He falls back against the wall next to Yukhei’s bed and tucks his feet underneath himself, sighing. “Well go ahead,” he says. “Start by introducing yourself—no one gave _him_ your number.”

Yukhei mumbles something out about how Taeyong-hyung had actually told Yunho-sunbaneim that he was asking for his number, in between grumbles about how he hadn’t gotten to tell anyone himself thanks to Taeyong-hyung, who took his role as leader very seriously and had several long distance phone calls with manager-hyungs and other various staff about it like Yukhei was… was _expecting,_ or something.

Ten sits in silence for a few seconds, weighing that thought over and over in his mind. “You’re not—”

“I’m not still in heat, Ten-hyung,” Yukhei says plaintively in Korean, even having the guts to roll his eyes. “Gosh, you’d think we’d slept together _after_ I presented, not before—”

Ten shuts his eyes against unwanted memories, because the last time wasn’t all that long ago, anyway, and they really hadn’t ever stopped since 2017, honestly, except for brief interludes for Ten to perform “Baby Don’t Stop” with Taeyong and learn the ins and outs of fanservice. It made the first few months in WayV with Yukhei more than a little unbearable, some part of him still smarting from the first time he tried to kiss Taeyong in private and got let down easy. It was too real when Yukhei touched him. Hell, Ten was still more often than not _calling him Xuxi_. Out loud, instead of just in his head, or in his bed. “What—”

“I’m not planning on having kids _anytime soon_ , Ten-hyung, you can relax,” Yukhei says, still in perfectly passable Korean, and Ten can’t help but narrow his eyes suspiciously at him. (He’s not touching the kids thing. God no.) 

“Have you been practicing by yourself?” he says, because they’ve always studied together. Ten diligently, Renjun only there so he could torment the others, and Yukhei laughing too hard at whatever nonsense he’d drawn on his worksheets to really learn anything. At the press conference in America, Yukhei stumbled over his words so badly Taemin-hyung prompted Ten to translate for him. Ten doubts it was fake—Yukhei wouldn’t—but more likely then it was _nerves_ , and Ten just. Still doesn’t know what to do with that. Yukhei’s the most confident of all of them, despite the language barriers, and Ten knows if he put in the work instead of letting the lack of skill get to him, he could be on Mark’s level. It probably hasn’t helped that they’re promoting in China now, and Yukhei gets to be funny and clever and personable in a way he’s never able to in Korea, and now America.

(He’s funnier and cleverer in the dorm, when he and Hendery and Dejun are tossing Cantonese around so fast no one else can follow, and there’s always so much _laughing_. Ten supposes there will be even more of that, now that they have one more thing in common.) 

“No.” Yukhei’s not at all very convincing. “But what should I say?” He pulls up the empty chat with Yunho-sunbaenim and stares at it for a long, long time, gnawing on his lower lip.

“Stop that,” Ten says, pawing at his wrist until they’re holding hands, and stares furtively down at the phone between them. _Hi, sunbaenim, this is Wong Yukhui Lucas_ , seems like the safest thing to say. Then maybe _, I got your number from Taeyong-hyung_ to provide them with some cover and maybe get Taeyong to stop throwing fits.

“Why, does it bother you?” says Yukhei, voice quiet and low and probing, even as he comfortingly circles all of Ten’s fingers and then some with barely more than his palm. “Me, biting my lip.”

Ten looks up from their linking fingers and stares at him, at the red-raw-bitten mess of him, and the sticking out ears, the bleach-blond hair in complete disarray. They dressed him in velvet teal for the jacket shoot, and Ten caught more than a few stylists holding up fabric swatches to Yukhei’s head like it was a contest. Ten doesn’t want to think about it, Lucas with teal hair to match the suit, tall and gorgeous and smiling so hard at the crowds that it’d have to hurt. 

“It makes me want to kiss you,” he says, in English because it’s Yukhei’s worst language, and he doesn’t want to risk him understanding it in Korean. It’s not worth the subterfuge because Yukhei drags him in close anyway, lashes fluttering and tongue darting out to wet his lips.

“So kiss me,” he says, also in English, and the next few minutes are spent getting reacquainted with each other’s tonsils, not texting their renowned senior. It’s fine. Ten hasn’t kissed Yukhei since before he presented, and he’s eager to see what’s changed.

(Not much; he kisses the same, practically eats at Ten’s lips at first until he seems to realize he’s got more than a little experience and isn’t an over-eager teenager anymore, though he tastes different, somehow darker, more significant, and with a hint of spice to him that makes Ten’s teeth tingle and his fingers shake where they’re still caught in Yukhei’s own, still curled helplessly around his fucking phone.)

“We are not videoing Yunho-hyung looking like this,” Ten says when they pull apart, breathing hard and trying not to think about it, trying not to wonder about all the little differences now. How they won’t need to steal lube from their hyungs anymore, and how he can already tell from Yukhei’s face and the way he’s shifting on the bed that there will be no kissing or foreplay before shows anymore. It’s too obviously effective, too obviously the cause for the delicious curl of warmth blooming deep in Ten’s belly, creeping into his heart, pressing up to that special part on the roof of his mouth that still somehow thinks it’s okay that he’s not an alpha, not what Yukhei wants.

Or—clearly Xuxi— _Yukhei—_ Yukhei wants him—Yukhei kisses him—but Yukhei’s _body_ doesn’t want Ten’s body. Maybe if he were a few centimeters taller, a few hands broader, if he popped a knot every April instead of just looking around wistfully as his family and friends were indisposed for one or two days.

Maybe then he’d be what Yukhei needed.

“Hey.” Yukhei tugs at Ten’s hand, but the one around the phone. The one he’s clutching he just clutches harder. “You called him Yunho-hyung.”

Ten rewinds the conversation and finds that he had just called their senior “Yunho-hyung” and tries to pull away for a completely different set of reasons now. “I did,” he says, aghast. “Don’t tell him, oh God—”

“He’s always telling us to call him hyung anyway,” Yukhei says, pulling up KakaoTalk and formulating a perfectly accurate introduction, the phone’s autocorrect helping him out with any misplaced vowels or wrongful double consonants.

`Hi, Yunho-hyung? This is Wong Yukhui Lucas. I got your number from Taeyong-hyung.`

He looks at Ten for guidance before hitting send, and Ten nods him through it. “You really don’t need me—”

They pause as the number next to the message disappears, signifying that Yunho-sunbaenim has read it.

Ten eyes the time at the top of Yukhei’s phone, before busying himself with Yunho-sunbaenim’s response.

`Lucas, hi`, he’s written, cheery despite the impersonality of the medium. `Taeyongie said you might call.` There’s a pause, like he’s thinking over what it is he’s just said. `Er, text, I guess. Haha.` Even Yunho-sunbaenim’s keiuks look cheerful, and Ten is kind of speechless. `Congratulations on presenting`, he sends finally. `Did you have any particular questions?`

And finally Ten looks at Yukhei, who very clearly does have questions—tons, if the mildly constipated look on his face says anything about that—and breathes through his nose. “Would you rather video him?”

“Yes please,” Yukhei says immediately in Mandarin, and then ducks his head in embarrassment when he notices.

Ten doesn’t think it’s about typing or proficiency in language—Yukhei likes talking to people when he can see their eyes, and Ten knows part of that is because it means he won’t ever get misunderstood. His easy dimples and perfect teeth make it hard to stay mad at him when he no doubt botches whatever language he’s speaking.

Ten also thinks this is a conversation Yukhei should get to have at home with his mother, not halfway across the world with a man who did it all before them in a completely different time period. This feels like it should be a family thing, like opening it up to even more than just immediate band members is going too far with it.

But Yukhei’s mother wouldn’t have the guidance Yukhei was looking for, not like Yunho-sunbaenim, who’s done it all before him, who will always be doing it before him, who somehow came out of the military a special class soldier and as good as married to his bandmate. Ten’s seen the Red Ocean in person—once back when he was a trainee and most recently at SMTOWN Osaka—and that was after the two of them had announced they were dating. Idols don’t date, and certainly not their male bandmates. Certainly not their omega bandmates—no one’s out and omega in the industry except for Rain-sunbaenim, and that’s only because he married Taehee-sunbaenim and some asshole reporter tried to suggest their bond was a sham.

Ten gives himself a shake, dragging free of his thoughts, and reaches for Yukhei’s phone. “Can I?” He doesn’t wait for a response, just keys in the characters until they spell out, `Do you mind if we video? It would be easier.` He adds a sticker to be polite, then waits.

Yunho-sunbaenim comes back almost instantly. `Sure! But let me get up. The light’s already bugging Changminnie and he’s not going to be pleased if I start talking.`

Ten and Yukhei pause, no doubt both parsing that to the inevitable conclusion that Yunho-sunbaenim’s just been messaging them from the bed he shares with Changmin-hyung. 

Ten turns to Yukhei with barely concealed panic. “Do you think he’ll have a shirt on?”

“Ten-hyung,” Yukhei says, because Korean’s better for that than Mandarin, and he’s never been overly fond of the word “gege.”

“What?” Ten stands by the question; it’s a real possibility; he wouldn’t be sleeping with a shirt on if he was mated to Changmin—someone, Ten amends very quickly, because they’re about to be videoing Yunho-sunbaenim and he’d like to not _die_.

“He’s calling.” Yukhei helpfully waves the phone in Ten’s face and then goes to answer, shifting around on the bed so that mostly Ten shows up on the screen.

“Wait—you have to tell him I’m _here—_ Hi, Sunbaenim, hi!” blurts Ten immediately, bowing profusely while simultaneously glaring daggers out of the corner of his eye at Yukhei. Curse his stupid libido for telling him the large-handed, most-definitely-an-alpha idiot was worth risking his career over.

Yunho-sunbaenim only blinks, eyes moving between Yukhei’s tiny sliver of face and Ten’s entire screenful. “Ten-ah.” He sounds a little glum, but he always does because he’s made a game of trying to pronounce Ten’s legal name, even though Ten would never use it, let alone want anyone to use it seriously, because Ten’s been debuted for three years now and even his own bandmates still stumble over his last name.

(Taeyong doesn’t, but Taeyong’s Taeyong, and likes to know everything about his members, from their takeout order to their legal birth names, apparently. Also, when they were doing “Baby Don’t Stop” they had a lot of free time and forcing Taeyong to butcher the Thai language was frankly a much better use of their time than any of the other nonsense they could have gotten up to.)

“Hi,” Yunho-sunbaenim finishes, before turning his attention to Yukhei. “Lucas.”

Yukhei shoves further into frame but only waves, clearly embarrassed.

Ten sighs. “I’m here to help translate,” he explains politely. “Pretend I’m not even here.”

Yunho-sunbaenim smiles, then gets a startlingly clever look on his face and tilts his own phone, panning Changmin-hyung into view. Changmin-hyung’s not wearing a shirt. Yunho-hyung is, but it really doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be his, in hindsight. Ten very rapidly becomes aware of this fact as he looks at his grumpy-looking senior, sitting there with his arms crossed and one perfectly groomed brow raised in challenge.

“What are you doing—”

“Changminnie’s here for moral support and also to translate,” Yunho-sunbaenim says brightly. “Pretend he’s not even here.”

“What am I translating—you speak Korean?” Changmin-hyung says almost simultaneously, and Yunho-sunbaenim’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he laughs.

“Accent,” is all he says, and Ten nods.

“Ah,” he says.

“Ah?” Yukhei parrots.

“Satoori,” Ten automatically explains. “It’s like—”

“‘Satoori Rap’?” Yukhei says with a grin.

Ten stares at him.

“What? I read things.”

Ten lets out a long breath, not sure if he wants to strangle his bandmate or hang up on Yunho-sunbaenim so that he can go back to making out with him. Taeyong would find out and be _livid_ and be sure to make the next few months promoting as SuperM absolutely unlivable, but Ten thinks it might be worth it for the taste of Wong Yukhei. He wonders if Yukhei tastes different _everywhere_. He wonders—

“Lucas, hi,” Yunho-sunbaenim says before Ten can say or do anything unforgivable. “I’m glad you asked after me.”

Yukhei ducks his head, a weird mix of shyness and uncertainty in his proficiency, but stumbles through his usual greetings anyway. There are no misplaced hand gestures or five hundred different lights shining in their faces, and he does much better than he’s ever done to Yunho-sunbaenim in person.

Ten becomes acutely aware of the fact that they’re still holding hands, but he’s not about to draw attention to that.

“What did you want to ask me about?” Yunho-sunbaenim says, eyes very kind and tone matter-of-fact. “Heat things? I can only speak from experience and I’m mated—”

“Yah, don’t tell him about _heat_ stuff, what the heck is wrong with you—” Changmin-hyung can be heard in the background, shifting into view so that both Ten and Yukhei get to see the full scale of his muscle definition, almost as frightening as his angry scowl. “Lucas. Ten. Hi. Listen, you don’t want this loser’s advice—ask Donghae-hyung. He’s got loads of advice and never spent any time repressing his instincts—”

“Donghae’s nice—you could ask him, I guess.” It’s clear Yunho-sunbaenim is not really hurt by this but he’s still pouting, and when Ten sees the look on Changmin-hyung’s face he _totally_ gets it, although now he just kind of feels like a voyeur, like he’s looking at something no one else should look at.

He totally understands why TVXQ has survived the two of them coming out as being with each other, because he knows firsthand how the fans feel about fanservice, and this is so much more than that. He can tell Yunho-sunbaenim and Changmin-hyung are nothing if not professionals—when they were all on stage at SMTOWN Osaka they were never so much as in the same frame together for too long, sticking close to their friends and refusing to act any different just because the world knew they were sleeping together. But there were moments when they were just walking around the stage that made the entire crowd scream themselves even more hoarse—when they shared a water bottle without communication; when they passed each other in the middle of the group performance of “Hope,” and made smiling, silent, squeal-inducing eye contact. Ten found the whole thing more than a little awe inspiring—both the size of TVXQ’s fanclub, and the support of their fans. But he gets it now. He sees it now. Whatever spark that links Yunho-sunbaenim and Changmin-hyung is so, so clear now, even all the way across an ocean looking at a phone.

Ten darts a look at Yukhei, almost afraid of what he’ll find, but unable to help himself.

Yukhei looks back at him, mouth parted and eyes wet and wide, and there’s an odd hunger in him that Ten’s never seen before, not when he was the only one of them unpresented and leaving his teens. Only Jisung and Chenle are still holding out for a heat or a rut at this point, and they were both born after 2000. Yukhei’s so fucking late, really. Ten worries about him for all of a few seconds.

The rest of the call is far more serious, with Yukhei working his way through voicing things Ten would never have thought to ask about: do you tell people when you meet them on broadcast? Do you correct people if they make assumptions? What brand of suppressants do you take? Does it matter? What do you tell your mom, when she asks about _children_ and _wives_? Is it hard, when people think you’re something you’re not just because of what you presented as? Is it hard, knowing people think you’re something you _are_ , just because of what you presented as?

Ten translates as best he can and ducks in and out of Mandarin and Korean throughout the conversation and tries not to show how hard his heart is beating, how he can’t help but notice how Changmin-hyung keeps staring at his and Yukhei’s very obviously linked hands. Yukhei did a thing at the beginning, when he was still trying to put his thoughts into Korean, and used his hands to help demonstrate, which tugged Ten along with him, eyes rolling, and now they’re stuck holding hands for both of TVXQ to see. Ten honestly doesn’t even really care.

Not all that much, anyway.

Yukhei leaves the conversation with a promise that he’ll call if he needs _anything_ , and the last thing they hear is Changmin-hyung’s over dramatic yawning in the background, the sentence, “Yes, bye, Dongsaengs. Can you believe it, Yunho-yah, you’re giving _relationship_ advice now—” helpfully interrupted before it can reach its full conclusion. 

Ten sets the phone down and feels relieved that the call ended when it did.

“He called him Yunho-yah,” Yukhei says quietly, tone surprisingly subdued.

Ten feels his heart pound even harder. “Yeah, well, they’re mated,” he mutters, finally trying to take his hand back. “Xuxi—”

Yukhei lets him pull almost all the way free before he holds fast, keeping Ten on the bed with him. Keeping Ten in the room. They’ve been at it for almost an hour and Sicheng’s probably bunked with Hendery, stealing Ten’s bed because they’re all still pretending no one knows they share one whenever Ten sleeps over, Sicheng’s bed left cold and empty this and every other night.

“Could I call you Ten-ah if we were—” Yukhei breaks off, startled, when Ten pulls away so hard that he almost falls off the bed.

“If we were what?” Ten says, staring hard at the wall with the door so that Yukhei can’t see the terror in his eyes, the involuntary almost-tears. “Soulmates?” The word doesn’t want to come out, so when it does, it sounds ugly. “Xuxi.”

“Ten.”

“We’re not soulmates,” Ten says, still not looking at him or turning around. “I’m—a beta—” The sentence breaks into two parts; some bit of Ten still feels inadequate no matter how hard he tries not to, no matter how hard he hates that something as mundane as how his body works can make him feel so… useless. “You’re an omega—”

“So are Taehee and Rain,” Yukhei says, because of course he’d say that. Of course he’d think of that.

Ten knows. Ten read the news of their engagement when he was the only one of them who would have cared, before he really _knew_ Yukhei, let alone had slept with him. Ten saw the happy announcement, heard all about how pleased the two of them were to be expecting. Taehee-ssi had the baby, of course, because she was a beta, so Rain-sunbaenim couldn’t even if he’d wanted to. Ten heard it all. How thrilled they were, how supportive their families and friends were, how it’s only because she’s pretty, Kim Taehee, how it was such a shame that a sex icon like Rain-sunbaenim was like… that. And not even _that_ enough to attract a proper mate—a real alpha, even if she would have been a she. Ten heard it, and pretended he didn’t, and how dare Yukhei for making him remember.

“They have a baby. Everyone loves them,” Yukhei continues, and Ten can’t have this conversation right now.

“I can’t have this conversation right now,” Ten says. He stands, heart going what feels like a mile a minute. “I—I can’t—”

“Ten-hyung.” If Ten could bring himself to look back he knows Yukhei would be staring at him with his eyes soft and wet and huge. It always makes him want to cuddle him, to protect him, to translate all his words for him and smooth over any and all cultural faux pas. It’s worse now. Worse because he shouldn’t want to do that. Isn’t it funny, how Ten and the entire internet had it in their head that Yukhei was going to be something because of the way he looked and laughed and threw his head back and smiled, all teeth, as he sat on couches too small for him with his legs spread wide. Yukhei’s always needed to be babied; maybe less obviously than some of the others, but really Ten shouldn’t have been surprised. (And that wasn’t even counting in bed, when half of the time Yukhei was already rolling onto his front with his eyes all hooded and his spine all arched and, oh, Ten was an idiot for not noticing, Ten was a hopeful, idiotic _fool—_ )

“Xuxi. Lucas,” he says, and only stumbles slightly over the stage name.

Yukhei takes him by the hand and tugs, using his full strength to get his way: Ten falling immediately back onto the bed with a bounce and a gasp, making it all the more easy for Yukhei to clamor over him, taking Ten’s wrists in both hands even though he only needs one—fuck, that’s still hot, _fuck—_ and lining their bodies up fully so that the height difference is all the more apparent. Yukhei’s feet are hanging off the bed and Ten’s toes keep brushing his fucking shinbones.

“Xuxi,” Yukhei says, and fucking pouts.

Ten should make a joke about Yukhei forgetting which one of them is which. Ten should not be staring at Yukhei’s lips like all he wants to do is sneak a kiss. Ten should definitely not be thinking about how all he wants to do is go belly down for Yukhei, make his eyes hooded and arch his back like they’re back in Dubai and fuck, August Ten hadn’t appreciated all the barely censored fan comments about Lordosis position but October Ten doesn’t have any qualms about it; but Yukhei’s the one who would do it, Yukei’s the one who’s an omega, Ten is—

Not an alpha.

All the air rushes out of Ten’s lungs in one great gust. “Fuck,” he says, and stares rather pointedly at the ceiling for the next few moments.

Yukhei lets him, which is a little surprising, but when Ten finally glances at him, he quickly realizes it’s just because Yukhei’s trying to beg for kisses with his eyes, something he’s gotten remarkably good at since they started this. It’s got to be because half the time he’s swapping languages like it’s his job (it is), and not just because Ten’s easy for him.

Even though Ten is.

Always.

“We’re not doing this,” Ten tries to say seriously.

Yukhei pouts some more.

“We’re only doing this if we don’t have to talk about it?” Ten goes for instead, trying to smile.

Yukehi frowns down at him, fingers tapping some odd beat against Ten’s wrists. Great—now Ten’s thinking about how Yukhei’s got both hands wrapped around his wrists, got both of Ten’s hands pinned up by his ears, has pressed every inch of them together so that when they breathe their ribs knock up against each other. Ten’s fucking _fucked_ , and not in a good way. Not in the way he wants to be. Can’t be. Shouldn’t be. Not anymore—

“Xuxi—”

“Stop talking,” Yukhei says, which isn’t an agreement to Ten’s conditions, but Ten gives in anyway.

“I—” he says, once Yukhei’s abandoned his wrists and moved on to his shoulders, the span of one thumb enough to cover Ten’s entire jugular. He leaves it there, palm covering the entirety of Ten’s left collarbone, and stares down at him with something far too knowing in his gaze.

Ten stares up at him with glassy eyes and does his best to get his breath back. This feels like an important pause. This feels like the space where Yukhei tries to say—something. Ten doesn’t know what, but he doesn’t want to hear it. Can’t hear it. “Xuxi—”

“You shouldn’t focus so much on soulmates, Ten-hyung,” says Yukhei, in an odd blend of Korean and Mandarin.

Ten blinks up at him.

“I’m only twenty-one.”

Ten fights back a groan. No need to remind _him_.

“I’m really not interested in like. Marriage.” Yukhei pulls a face, a gesture so utterly teenage that Ten kind of wants to scream, and they’re only three years apart. “Or like. Kids.” That gets more face pulling, and Yukhei finally stops molesting Ten’s chest long enough for him to flop over on the bed next to him. It’s not a queen because they’re not in a mansion in Los Angeles, and it’s barely large enough to fit Yukhei, let alone Yukhei _and Ten_ , who is supposed to be bite-sized. “You don’t want kids now, do you?”

Ten stares hard at the lights on the ceiling until his eyes hurt. “Well, no,” he says finally, voice coming out hoarse from all the kissing. He can always smell Yukhei when they do this, but it only gets worse when he opens his mouth. It’s like doing so has removed whatever filter that always sits across Ten’s senses and keeps him from noticing when Taeyong goes into rut until he’s taking the pills to prevent it. Yukhei smells even better now, and somehow stronger. Like. Well. Like he’s… Like he’s… _wet_. 

Ten swallows and it’s painful. “I don’t. I mean I’ve always liked—I just thought it would never happen, since I’d have to find an omega stupid enough to settle for me—”

“Hey.”

Ten’s arm stings suddenly and it takes him a moment to realize that Yukhei’s punched him, and didn’t hold back.

“I’m not stupid.” Of course Yukhei would focus on that. “And I wouldn’t have to be stupid to—to _settle_ with you—you’re—you’re awesome—”

Ten should kiss him to get him to be quiet, or something, and not just cover his face with both hands until the urge to scream goes away. “Xuxi—”

“Besides all that shit about how alphas only should be with omegas is bullshit.”

Ten peeks a look at him from between two fingers, but Yukhei isn’t even looking at him, propped up into a sitting position with his chin on his knees and a scowl marring his perfectly proportioned features, hair failing in disarray about his prominent ears.

“I don’t want to marry you,” Yukhei continues. “Or mate you—”

Something stupid in Ten’s chest aches.

“I mean not _now—_ I’m _twenty-one—_ but—fuck.” Yukhei breaks off to swear, impressively, in rapid-fire Cantonese that’s far too quick for Ten to even begin to try to parse it. “I like _you_ ,” Yukhei says finally, in long, drawn out Mandarin. Any less familiarity between them and Ten might not understand, the inflections gone all wrong. “I—want to be with _you_.”

Ten’s stupid aching heart fucking tries to _mend_.

“Why does it matter that you’re a beta?”

And Ten should say that it doesn’t, even though biologically speaking it very well _might_ (they’ve only been back on the peninsula for under twenty four hours; Ten’s had literally zero time to properly embarrass himself on the internet about the physical aspects of dating—of _sleeping_ with an omega when you’re only a beta, so like, what does he know?). That’s what Yukhei wants him to say, what Ten’s traitorous, longing heart _wants_ him to say. “It—” Ten’s speaking before he can even try to stop himself. “It doesn’t—” He hurts when he stops but he’s said it and now it’s out there even though it could actually matter (it should; it will; you’re not what he needs; you’ll never be what he needs; you should just give up and go home).

Yukhei smiles, glowing like the sun is coming out of every pore in his skin. “Ten-hyung,” he says, with only a mild break in between the words. (Ten’s not thinking about it. Ten’s absolutely not thinking about it. _Could I call you Ten-ah if we were soulmates_ — Ten’s not _thinking about it—_ )

“Don’t make a big deal about it,” Ten says, looking away and at Sicheng’s empty bed instead. “We’re not—it’s not like we’re getting married, or anything.” _Or going to have kids. Or going to last longer than it takes for you to have a real heat and realize you need more. Want more_ , Ten thinks.

Yukhei is surprisingly quiet for a long moment, seemingly content to just lie next to each other and breathe.

Finally, Ten moves to get to his feet. “I should go get Sicheng,” he says. “Let him know it’s safe to come back to his bed.” Hendery always gives him shit when Ten swaps rooms without letting him know—something about hating to wake up next to someone completely unexpected, which Ten knows is totally just grief for the sake of grief, but whatever. He’d hate to make intra-band drama.

“Or you could stay,” Yukhei says.

Ten sits up anyway. “We have schedules,” he says. They’re in and out of seemingly endless rehearsals in prep for the SuperM showcase recording in three days. Not to mention WayV. They don’t have time for this. Certainly not when everything to do with Yukhei’s presentation is still so new.

Yukhei shifts on the bed a little, frowning. “Ugh, I should shower,” he says, after more than a few wiggles. “Uh—” He flushes, suddenly shy, and ducks his head, not meeting Ten’s eyes. “Er.”

Ten stares at him, then down at his lap, then inhales involuntarily, and then spends the next few moments looking literally _anywhere else_.

They _really don’t have time_. Everything is really _so fucking new_.

Yukhei stops him before he can leave the room, after a simple good night without any more kisses or anything—so different! So, so, so fucking _different_! “Hyung, uh,” he says, then comes to an awkward halt.

Ten stands still, not looking back at him, with one hand on the door handle. For some horrifying reason, he’s not willing to leave. “So, um,” he says finally. “Are we like—are we dating, now?” Immediately Ten panics—what the fuck was that? That was _not_ what Ten had wanted to say _at all_. He can’t fucking take it back because the room’s gone quiet and _neither one of them are talking_ , oh my fucking God—and starts making plans to retire early and head straight back to Thailand.

“Yeah, duh,” Yukhei says, and Ten pulls hard on the door handle, feeling like his ears are on fire.

“Cool!” Ten says, voice coming out unbearably high. “Awesome. I’ll, uh, see you around—”

“Yeah, see you, Hyung,” Yukhei calls after him, right before the door shuts with a slam.

Ten stands frozen in the hallway staring at his bare feet against the hardwood floors for a long, long time, before giving himself a shake, and going to reclaim his room. He texts Taeyong and Kun in the groupchat that they set up back when WayV was just NCT China—`So, uh, Lucas and I are dating now, I guess?`—before hurriedly shoving his phone in a drawer on the other side of his room.

Sicheng is passed out and snoring, and Hendery only lifts his head long enough to glare at him—Ten is really going to have to demand that Taeyong give _him_ Yunho-sunbaenim’s number so that he can get lessons on how not to piss off his omega bandmates—before dropping back down and going straight back to sleep.

So Ten grabs his pajamas, leaves the phone in the drawer because he’d like to live to see the dawn and has no interest in getting a lecture, and goes back to Yukhei and Sicheng’s room to sleep.

“What happened to waking Sicheng?” Yukhei says, all the way undressed for the shower and standing in front of the mirror on his dresser fluffing his hair.

Ten makes a startled, deer in the headlights noise and tries fruitlessly to keep his eyes from tracking up and down the long line of him. Yukhei’s always been lanky—all stretched out muscle and not enough modesty—but it’s worse now. Worse because now apparently they’re dating, not merely fucking, and if Ten wanted to he could cross the room and kiss him, ask about his day (that they spent together) and then ask if he wanted some company in the shower.

“Too much work,” Ten manages, when it becomes clear that the silence has not only gone on for far too long but it’s also really fucking obvious that he’s only quiet because he’s been ogling. “You don’t—” He totally doesn’t squeak when Yukhei moves to walk past him towards the door, reaching for the towel hanging on the rack behind it and still not moving to cover himself. “You don’t mind?”

“Make yourself at home,” Yukhei says over his shoulder as he goes, towel only pressed helpfully over his front—the back—the back of his thighs are—are _glistening—_ Ten could just _die—_ “Boyfriend,” Yukhei finishes in fucking Korean like he’s been _waiting_ to use it, and Ten lets out a laugh that is more like a cry for help.

“Awesome,” he says. “Have a nice shower,” he adds. “Oh my fucking God,” he ends up saying, once he’s alone.

Yukhei takes really fucking long showers which are only ever made even longer by the fact that it’s night and most of the dorm is asleep and not breathing down his neck for the bathroom, and so Ten doesn’t feel guilty at all for how fast he’s back in Yukhei’s bed, all the lights off, under the covers, and with both hands down his pajama pants.

Ten only feels a little guilty when he uncaps the lube, tells himself it’s only because they probably won’t _need it_ anymore, and that Yukhei really wouldn’t mind, and then afterwards he’s so strung out and boneless despite the less than stellar orgasm that he falls straight asleep, only waking up the next morning when Kun barges into the room to yell at them both about the importance of being reachable, and also to thrust a giant bouquet of yellow poppies into Yukhei’s arms.

“This is—for presentation congratulations?” Yukhei says, tilting his head to one side so that he looks even more like a confused foreigner, and Ten feels absolutely no remorse about kicking his naked ass straight out of the bed.

* * *

Surprisingly, going from friends with benefits with your two-times over bandmate to dating your two-times over bandmate isn’t really all that life changing. Everyone in the group knew about them anyway, since as mentioned, Yukhei hadn’t ever really ever been subtle, and like, they’d all gotten drunk and made out more than a few times just to see what all the fuss was about. Also, Yunho-sunbaenim and Changmin-hyung existed, so no one was going to go around suddenly making a fuss, or whatever. It’s really not any different, Ten realizes, although he’s really not sure he’s ever going to stop jumping whenever Yukhei goes to touch him in the company of others.

“Ten,” Yukhei says mildly after one such startle. They’re in SuperM practice and most of the hyungs are off reviewing footage with Taeyong, who keeps cycling between the two of them and Mark like the most unsubtle of all chaperones.

Mark’s standing by the mirror chugging water like it’s a competition, but every so often he meets Yukhei’s eyes and fucking raises his eyebrows.

Ten really would like to trip him a few times, but they can’t afford the setbacks.

“You’re being weird.”

Ten isn’t. _Yukhei is_ , all smiley and normal and acting like nothing’s really changed, like they can really be more than just fuck-buddies! It took only one tear-filled phone call with his mother to beat it into Ten’s thick skull that he and that Lucas boy had been dating for far longer than just since the eleventh, Ten, darling, please, but Ten’s in denial because the alternative is terrifying. The world has completely spun off its axis since Yukhei is _an omega_ , who really should be with an alpha, and not just a lacking beta like Ten.

“Stop being weird.”

Ten stares at him and wants to wring his neck. “I’m not being weird—”

“You are,” the rest of the room choruses, not even looking up from dance review or water bottles.

Ten very helpfully switches to Mandarin. “I’m not—” He has the good sense not to finish that sentence, one eyebrow lift from Yukhei enough to curb that little denial. “This is just weird for me, people knowing,” he adds, like that wasn’t clear.

Yukhei stares at him. “People have always known.”

“Yeah, well, not like this,” Ten says. “Not when you’re—”

“An omega,” Yukhei says loudly, in Korean this time, and then crosses the room purposefully to engage Mark.

Ten is left staring after him feeling like even more of an idiot, and he catches Baekhyun-hyung not so subtly shoving an elbow into Taemin-hyung’s side. 

* * *

It’s not that they’ve stopped having sex, because they haven’t, obviously—at least, before.

Ten cries, even though he never really knew her, and SM cancels as much of the schedules as they can afford to including SuperM’s The Beginning recording on the fourteenth and fifteenth. They see Yunho-sunbaenim sooner than expected when TVXQ fly back for the funeral, and Yukhei bows to them in the halls at SUM when they meet, awkward and uncertain. Ten and Yukhei are both scheduled for mini vacations, Ten heading back to Thailand at the same time as Taemin-hyung, who’s there for work. Yukhei is due back to Hong Kong the day after Ten is due back to Korea, so they have to do the goodbye song and dance when Ten leaves on the eighteenth—a full four days premature.

It’s a welcome reprieve and a much needed trip back home. Ten’s eager to see Tern and his parents, even though he’s still not entirely certain how he’s going to explain Yukhei to any of them, let alone Tern. Tern’s Yukhei’s age and not a late bloomer, and she’s got a boyfriend of three years; Tern’s an omega and her boyfriend’s a perfectly sensible alpha; Tern is Ten’s best friend and Yukhei is—

He should tell her.

He stands awkwardly in front of Yukhei with his ticket and passport in one hand, shifting from foot to foot. “Are you—”

“Hey, so—”

They both stop, having spoken at the same time, and Ten fights the urge to laugh nervously. How has this become his life, honestly.

“Are you going to tell your parents?” is what he ends up saying, to fill the awkwardness.

Yukhei stares back at him with wide confused eyes. “About…” he prompts.

 _Us_ , Ten thinks, but doesn’t say. “You know,” he says. “You presenting.” It’s a copout.

Yukhei blinks at him a few times. “I told my parents the day after,” he says finally. He pauses, looking a little uncertain, then finishes, “About all of it.”

Ten doesn’t know what to do with that, or what that even means. And he can’t ask—can’t say what he really wants to say, because it’s too raw and too soon and too confusing. “Good,” he says instead. “Uh—have a good holiday.”

He leaves before Yukhei staring at him gets too uncomfortable and flees for Thailand and sun and sand and his baby sister, who’s waiting for him with sunglasses and a suitcase full of beachwear.

Ten tells her about Yukhei on the last day, sitting on the lawn together, staring out at the slowly setting sun. “I’m, uh, seeing someone, I guess,” he says, not looking away from the orange and pink on the horizon.

Tern’s got one camera out and they’ve been alternating between taking photos of each other and then taking photos of each other taking photos of each other. It’s the quietest they’ve been the entire vacation, and Ten likes it.

It’s never quiet at home in Korea or China. It’s never quiet at home in Thailand either, especially seeing his mother after so long.

Ten stares up at the rapidly dimming sky.

“Hey.” Tern nudges him. “Since when?”

Ten leans back on both palms and thinks about that, not sure if the better answer is, “three days ago,” or, “since 2017, when he cameoed in my music video.” “Does it matter?”

“It does if it’s one of your bandmates and it’s going to blow up your career,” Tern says practically, sounding like she’s rolling her eyes.

Ten shivers in the rapidly cooling night air despite the climate, already regretting not bringing a sweater. He walks his hands together behind his back and rubs at the skin of both wrists, tugging on bracelets and thinking about how unblemished he is all over, showing up in Tern’s photos looking milk pale and washed out. They’re trying all sorts of things with shutter speed and exposure this time, for Instagram. Tern’s following him now finally, after only five days. Ten would follow her back, but he has a team of people who approve that sort of thing, and it’s too much work to text a manager to ask if it’s okay if he can follow his own _sister_.

“It is one of my bandmates, but it’s not going to blow up my career,” Ten says. He doesn’t add that that’s mostly because he doesn’t think it’ll last long enough to blow up anyone’s career, let alone Ten’s.

His sister is unimpressed. “Uh-huh,” Tern says. “So which one is it? Hendery? People are always shipping you with Hendery. Or the one from Chicago—Johnny?” She switches into English so fast that Ten’s brain hurts, and he can only sputter at her.

“What—Hendery’s an omega—Johnny’s—Johnny—what do you mean people are always shipping—are you reading…” He trails off, searching for words. “ _Things_?”

Tern levels a truly inspiring stare back at him, and then leans in so she can take a truly awful photo of Ten’s collarbones.

“That is not going on Weibo or Instagram,” Ten says immediately, without even having to see it on the display screen.

Tern shoves the camera in his face and takes another with the flash on, leaving him blind and with spots covering his vision for three whole seconds. “Take a better one, then. Your fans love all the jewelry.”

The fans do, so Ten does, but he feels distinctly scrutinized the whole time.

His baby sister seems overly pleased with herself, settling more comfortably on the lawn. “Of course I don’t read things about you on the internet,” she says. “But if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be reading the porn.” She says the last bit with a put-on English accent, and Ten laughs, even as he thinks that she’s turning into a full person and he’s missing it. Tern is studying in England with her fashion line and Ten’s off seeing the world from stages and behind microphones. She’s the same age as Yukhei and she’s three years in love and so happy, and Ten remembers what it was like when she brought Mac home to meet Mom and Dad. How proud Mom was. Dad’s silent approval and not all that subtle interrogation.

He thinks rather suddenly of Yukhei, flying back to Hong Kong two days from now to see his family, and swallows.

“Hey.” Tern nudges him in the arm again. “It’s the loud one—Lucas—isn’t it.”

“Lucas,” Ten repeats, testing Yukhei’s stage name out like he’s never said it before in his life. “Wong Yukhei.” The name sounds wrong, coming out in Cantonese like that. Ten should learn the language but learning it would make it real, somehow, because he could pretend it was for their fans, but Hendery’s a _bad_ Mandarin teacher; Ten can’t imagine what it would be like to go to him for Cantonese.

Tern is looking at him with an unreadable turn to her mouth and seriousness in her expression that Ten’s never seen in her before. “You love him,” she decides. It’s not a question, and Ten doesn’t insult her by answering. “He’s kind of an idiot,” Tern continues after a tiny pause, tone significantly more pleased. Ten feels rather like he’s passed some sort of test, but he’d never even been aware he needed to study. “Loud,” Tern says again. “Tall.” She eyes Ten with eyes that have been in a relationship for three years. “Big hands—”

“Okay, that’s enough of that.” Ten switches back to Thai for the familiarity of their childhood, sitting straight up and giving his shoulders a roll, spine cracking. “It’s not—Xuxi’s an omega—” He stops, never sure how to say it, and never having had the guts to even bring it up with anyone in his family. Both their parents are betas and Ten wasn’t about to imply that he thought there was anything wrong with that, of course, but he still feels weightless and unresolved. Like if he thinks on it too hard he’ll just float all the up towards the sky.

“So?” For twenty-one and the staple annoying little sister, Tern’s surprisingly discerning of when Ten isn’t in the mood for jokes. “Don’t tell me you’re letting that old bullshit get to you.”

“Bullshit,” Ten repeats back to her, thinking of the last time he heard it phrased like that, of Yukhei, with his lips red-raw from kissing, and his eyes angry-wet from frustration.

“‘You’re going to be my perfect alpha grandson, Ten,’” Tern says, mimicking their grandmother perfectly. “‘And then you’re going to meet a lovely omega girl—’ ‘Or boy—’ ‘Shush, he doesn’t need that in his head.’ ‘Mom.’ ‘And then you’ll give me lovely great-grandchildren,’” Tern finishes, affecting her voice to match their mother’s interjections.

Ten stares at her.

Tern stares right back. She flops back against the lawn and gestures at the sky. “What does it matter?”

Ten drops down next to her, shifting so that their arms touch. “You sound so…” He trails off, uncertain how to best finish.

“Worldly?” Tern tries. “Educated? Living in the future?”

“Grown up,” Ten decides, and then rolls laughing when she tries to kick him in the face.

“Hey, don’t do that, I’m twenty-one years old,” Tern tells him once she’s done. “I’m not a baby anymore. I’m even a legal adult.”

Ten lets her sit on him with only mild complaint. “No, you’re not,” he says. “Still my baby sister, though.”

Tern sighs, but doesn’t object. “Have you told Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah,” Ten says finally. “Well, Mom knew already because apparently I talk about him,” he adds, making a face. “Although I talk about all of my bandmates—”

“Lucas most of all,” Tern interjects happily, not getting off his kidneys. “Or Xuxi.” She’s imitating him now, and Ten shoves her off him with no amount of remorse. “Big Strong Baby Xuxi.” She grins.

Ten scowls up at her, flushing. “That was—” He can’t finish that sentence because it wasn’t only one time, but the _first time_ was shortly after he’d come up with the nickname and there’d been— They’d been doing things he really would never like to discuss with his sister, at the time. Ten flushes.

“Big Strong Baby Xuxi who’s not really a baby when all of the rest of the group are all younger—hey, isn’t he like the only one of your group who hasn’t presented?”

Ten makes a face.

Tern closes her mouth. “Ah,” she says. She shifts around on the grass until she’s got one arm bent and her cheek in her hand. “So when was it?” she says. “His heat.”

Ten really hates that they’ve both grown up enough that they can talk about things like this, but talking about her relationship with Mac is the absolute last thing he’d like to be doing, so he’ll take it. “Tuesday,” he says. “The eighth.”

Tern winces.

Ten’s not unpacking that. “Anyway, I just—”

“I’m happy for you, big brother,” Tern says, and leans in so she can wrestle him into accepting wet, smacking kisses.

Ten determines it’s time to try to drown her in the sea.

* * *

Yukhei is back in Seoul after only a day in Hong Kong, and Ten’s still too nervous and nearly jumping out of his skin. It helps that they’re working on two things: WayV’s comeback and the SuperM tour. Ten throws himself into dancing and practicing and anything but thinking about him and Yukhei, even as Sicheng very kindly decides to basically swap beds with Ten and the rest of WayV walk around the two of them without pulling punches. At one point Hendery has the gall to ask Yukhei what it’s like, getting fucked by a beta, and Ten is so honest to God speechless that he completely forgets all the Mandarin he’s ever learned, and spends the next five minutes before their interview panicking when it doesn’t come back immediately.

To his credit, Yukhei just slants his eyes over towards Hendery, who stares back evenly like he’s honestly curious. “None of your business, unless you’re dating someone too,” he says finally, and the rest of them fall on that like a lifeline. Discussions of Hendery’s love life, while not nearly as interesting, are far less dangerous.

Ten remembers Mandarin in time to not make WayV look like useless foreign hacks, and the world keeps turning. Ten and Yukhei also keep dating and not quite going back to how things were before his heat. They even spend more than a few late nights figuring out all sorts of things they can do now that Yukhei has presented. Ten would think that would help, getting to work off energy in far more pleasurable ways than late night workouts, but the first time he hooks three fingers in Yukhei and it’s not enough—Yukhei begging before Ten’s even really started—Ten has to go spend twenty minutes on the treadmill anyways just to feel normal again, let alone ready to deal with that in the slightest.

He’s fine on the outside and it’s not like anyone seems to notice, which is why it comes as a complete shock when Taemin-hyung comes storming into their dorm the evening before WayV has to fly to Shanghai for Chinese promotions.

He’s not alone. Taeyong hovers in the background clearly having semi-facilitated this by tricking Kun into letting them into the dorm, although it’s not like anyone in WayV would ever turn away a company senior, let alone Taemin-hyung, who’s in a group with two of their members.

Yukhei is thankfully off bothering someone else, so it’s just Ten, Dejun, and YangYang in the living room, who all look up in surprise when the door finishes banging closed. Hendery is sleeping. Sicheng’s… elsewhere. 

Ten is on his phone. “Ah—”

“Ten-ah,” Taemin-hyung says, striding purposefully into the place and out of his shoes with the kind of elegance only good dancers have. Taeyong waves at Ten over his shoulder, before making furtive gestures at the rest of WayV, who tilt their heads and feign ignorance. Taemin-hyung grabs Ten’s phone right out of his hand, looks at it briefly, and then tosses it thankfully onto the other couch. “Are you looking at beta-omega porn?”

YangYang, Kun, and Dejun all very wisely decide to finally understand Taeyong, and get to their feet without saying anything else.

No one leaves besides Taeyong (who makes a few frightening gestures in Ten’s direction before the door closes), but they do very rapidly file out of the living room, leaving Ten and Taemin-hyung all alone.

“Am I what?” Ten manages to say finally. “No—Hyung—”

Taemin-hyung just sort of winces, like getting called “hyung” is some sort of hardship, before coming even closer and bending neatly at the waist.

“Hyung!” Ten just manages to yelp out again helplessly, before Taemin takes both of his cheeks in both of his palms. There is resounding silence, and a whole lot of eye contact. Finally, Ten speaks, “What—” only Taemin-hyung somehow gets even closer.

“Not only is that stuff inaccurate, but it’s also useless to you.”

Ten had actually been doodling in the drawing app he’s got on his phone and hadn’t even so much as thought about looking up beta-omega porn. Not since he flew back from Thailand and certainly not since he and Yukhei got intimately familiar with the benefits of self-lubrication.

“But you know what’s not useless and inaccurate?” continues Taemin-hyung, not looking away or blinking once. “Me. A real omega dude who’s been with real beta dudes.”

There are a multitude of beta “dudes” for Taemin-hyung to have been with and Ten was a Shawol before he was in SuperM with the man and he’s not an idiot without an internet connection, so immediately he starts laughing nervously. “What—”

Taemin-hyung takes a long, still breath, and unfortunately does not stop holding Ten by both cheeks.

“Erm—”

“Er, Lee Taem?” That’s not Ten’s voice. That’s Jongin-hyung’s voice, sounding tinny and like it’s coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Taemin-hyung’s back pocket.

“I’m getting there,” Taemin-hyung says seriously, still refusing to look away from Ten. “Don’t rush me. Otherwise you come do it.”

Jongin-hyung’s voice sighs. “For the last time I can’t—”

“Yunho-hyung would have been perfectly happy for the excuse to give another lecture, even if he would have to do it over the phone because he’s in Japan.”

Ten has a horrible, horrible thought that he’s dodged a fucking bullet, because he’s already sweating and Taemin-hyung’s just Taemin-hyung. He lost his phone at the airport and didn’t notice for like fifteen full minutes. Mark got it all on film. Ten can handle this much.

“For the last time—”

“Shut up, I’m doing it,” Taemin-hyung tells Jongin-hyung, before turning his full attention back on Ten. “Ten-ah.”

Ten stares back at him. “Why are you holding my face?” he manages to ask somehow. If possible, Taemin-hyung’s eyes have gotten even scarier, as he works himself up to whatever it is.

Over the phone, Jongin-hyung sighs once more. “Taemin, that was hyperbole. Please stop staring deep into his eyes. It’s not helping.”

Taemin-hyung keeps holding his brutal eye contact. “I have experience in these matters,” he tells Ten formally. “You will be able to fuck Lucas through his heat.”

Ten’s entire life is one gigantic inferno. He swallows. “What?”

Taemin-hyung still doesn’t deem it appropriate to stop clutching him by both cheeks. “It’s true. I’ve sat on my share of beta dicks before—”

“Oh my God,” Jongin-hyung says, in unison with a much less put together Ten. “Taemin—”

“You will be fine.” Taemin-hyung pauses, eyes going just a hint soft. “You will be enough,” he adds, and that’s just close enough to the heart of the matter that Ten makes a wounded, involuntarily little noise.

“I—” he somehow manages to get out.

Taemin-hyung sees that for the weakness that it is and lets go of Ten’s face. He stands back to his full height, finally looking uncomfortable.

Ten wonders how long he’s been planning, how long he’s been working through whatever this is in order to get here. To be… _forced here_ by Jongin-hyung, clearly, to—to _counsel Ten_. Ten would be insulted, if a very large part of him didn’t very much want the answers that only Taemin-hyung can give him. “You—really?” he says, and he sounds like a fucking child.

Taemin-hyung has the kindness to reach into his pocket and hang up on Jongin-hyung. “Yeah,” he says, no longer speaking like he’s reciting a prepared speech. “No one in SuperM,” he continues. “But, uh, well.”

Ten doesn’t think he needs to finish that sentence and honestly, he doesn’t think he’d like to know. It’s hard enough looking a lot of their EXO seniors in the eye now, having lived with Jongin-hyung and Baekhyun-hyung and all of their little insights. “Oh,” Ten says. “That’s—that’s good,” Ten says.

Taemin-hyung looks at him with suddenly sharper eyes. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Ten-ah—”

“Was that all you came over to say?” Ten says, not meaning to interrupt him but doing so anyway. He’s immediately apologetic, going to stand so that he can bow better, but Taemin-hyung just waves that off with a lazy hand in the air.

“Ten-ah,” he says. “Listen.”

Ten stares up at him.

“You’re enough,” Taemin-hyung says. He winces immediately afterwards so he must think it’s stupid, but Ten’s heart is already rallying.

He sits up so straight his spine audibly cracks; it must be all the dancing, and not old age, this young.

“Alphas and omegas.” Taemin-hyung pulls a face like he wishes he could start over. “People are too focused on who’s supposed to fit together that they forget that anyone and everyone can fit together.”

Ten blinks.

“And it’s 2019,” Taemin-hyung continues. “There’s ways around… certain things.”

 _Like how in heat an omega needs a knot for it to stop_ , Ten thinks, memory whirring away across the internet and the numerous, judgmental answers it had for the question `Will my omega boyfriend break up with me if I ask him to fuck me?` and `Can a beta help an omega through a heat?`

“Like.” Taemin-hyung is starting to look like he wishes he hadn’t hung up on Jongin-hyung. “Toys—listen, Ten-ah, are you sure you don’t just want to have this conversation with Lucas because we ran into him on our way here and Mark’s distracting him with Rock Paper Scissors—”

Ten winces. “No, I—” He doesn’t know how to admit that he’s a coward and horribly, horribly afraid. Like what if Yukhei says he doesn’t want to ever fuck Ten again? What if he says he will? What if Yukhei doesn’t _care_ that Ten’s a beta, that biology says they shouldn’t work together, and all that stuff he was saying about not wanting kids or to get married was just a front, and really in five years from now when they’re significantly more jaded from reality he’s going to get down on one knee and put his teeth into Ten. (And Ten will let him because he loves him and he’d marry him, so his bite will take and be there forever, linking them _together_ forever, like the world’s worst kept secret.)

“Ten-ah.” Taemin-hyung steps closer and bends down some more, but doesn’t take Ten by the cheeks again. “He wants you.”

Ten blinks, suddenly feeling like he could start crying and, what the fuck, really, maybe he’s the one who was a late bloomer and he’s been experiencing the world’s longest pre-heat with bonus emotional whiplash. “How do you—”

“Trust me,” Taemin-hyung says. He’s got an odd, little half-smile on his face like he’s holding something close to his chest. “To be frank, every part of him is probably telling him to go out and find himself—” He stops talking abruptly like there’s any way to finish that sentence without making their neighbors gasp.

“A great big alpha cock?” Ten says helpfully, around helpless, nervous giggles. He’s borrowing from Donghyuck, all those days ago. He was in the same dorm, sitting on the same couch, only Yukhei was the one across from him, with Ten’s heart in both of his hands.

“Yeah, that,” Taemin-hyung says around a snort. “Biologically speaking that’s what he—we—some of us—” He rolls his eyes. “We’re supposed to want that.”

Ten knows better than to try to unravel someone else’s insecurities, so he just nods.

“Lucas—that he’s here with you, wanting you, trying with you—he wants you, Ten-ah.” 

Ten stares back at him with blood rushing in his ears.

“Like, clearly he loves you, Ten-ah,” Taemin-hyung continues. “And clearly… you love him.”

“Yeah well, he’s loud,” Ten says, like that explains any of it at all. “And kind of not that bright. And like, okay, don’t tell him, but half the time he says ‘ah’ and pretends not to understand you because he just would rather not speak Korean,” he keeps going pointlessly, like Yukhei didn’t worm his way in close to him like some sort of overgrown, over-dimpled weed, with bad manners and bad Mandarin and even worse ideas about personal space and how friends with benefits were even supposed to work. Like Yukhei wasn’t what he saw when he woke up more often than not, or the last thing in his sight before he fell asleep. Like he wasn’t the one who brought Ten coffee how he liked it and humored all his little issues with any and all fruits; taught him tiny bits of Cantonese like it was second nature and then turned around and acted like he was the worst at languages. 

Like everyone on the planet didn’t probably know at this point, let alone SuperM. 

“Yeah,” Taemin-hyung says. “He’s not loud with us, though.”

And Ten has the bizarre urge to defend him. “He’s just—” Yukhei has never been shy in his life but that’s the only word Ten can come with. “Worried about the language,” he ends up with, which isn’t that blatantly untrue, only heavily belied by all that nonsense Ten had spouted earlier, about Yukhei choosing not to speak out on purpose. 

Taemin-hyung is looking at him with a smug, unfairly knowing smile. “You love him,” he says again.

Ten still can’t deny it.

“Stop overthinking it,” Taemin-hyung says.

Ten opens and closes his mouth a few times. That makes it all sound so much _easier_ than it really is.

“I’ll give you free reign for any and all violating questions next April?” Taemin-hyung offers like a peace offering, and Ten reaches out a hand for a handshake like he’s been offered another SM contract.

“Deal,” he says immediately.

“Awesome,” Taemin-hyung says. “Now—”

The door slams open, revealing Yukhei with a gasping Mark on his heels, who takes one look between the two of them and visibly balks.

“Okay, so, crying, and—pheromones—”

“What pheromones?” Taemin-hyung starts to say, appalled, even as he smiles once at Ten and then starts walking Mark purposefully out of the dorm. “Mark-ah.”

Mark winces. “That sounds really weird when you do that, but please, please, don’t call me—”

“Minhyung-ah,” Taemin-hyung continues, grinning. “Whatever do you mean by ‘pheromones?’”

“I’m just gonna—we’re just gonna—Lucas, buddy, best three out of five next time?”

Yukhei reaches out to high five Mark with great glee. “Sure thing, buddy,” he says in perfect English. It should not be hot. Ten should not want to climb him like a fucking tree.

Mark glances between the two of them again and makes another face. “Gross— _pheromones_ ,” he says again.

Ten tips his head to one side and then back again. “Beta,” he says in explanation. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You smell happy,” Yukhei says easily. “And like you’ve been crying, and Taemin smells all… parental.” For once he keeps Taemin-hyung’s name in Mandarin, and that’s clearly to avoid the massacre that would occur if Taemin-hyung understood that last bit.

“And all… lovey,” Mark puts in helpfully, still not all the way out of their dorm because Taemin-hyung must hate them. “Like it’s just… I’m happy for you both, really, but is this going to be what’s like all the time with you both, Ten-hyung, because it was already bad enough now that Lucas gets all… broadcast-y whenever he’s thinking of you—”

“Alphas,” Yukhei and Taemin-hyung chorus in perfect unison, before the dorm door shuts in Mark’s face.

“Bye,” Ten says helpfully from his place on the couch. “Thanks for your well wishes, Minhyung-ah, they mean a lot.”

He doesn’t need to see to know Mark’s flipping him off American style.

When Ten finishes feeling particularly happy with himself, Yukhei is smiling down at him, leaned up against the wall with his arms crossed.

“What are you staring at?” It’s possible Ten’s feeling more than a little defensive.

“You smell really, really happy,” is all Yukhei says, before toeing his shoes off with an audible thud, and then wandering, the proverbial cat who got the cream, into his bedroom. Sicheng emerges moments later carrying his laptop, making pitiful eyes at Ten as he goes.

“Can’t we just trade rooms and stop this farce?” he says hopefully as he goes.

“Yes, thank you for your input, Sicheng, you’re my favorite,” Ten says loftily, and then puts his nose in the air and goes to follow his… boyfriend. Yukhei is his boyfriend. Yukhei wants him, even though Ten’s not an alpha, and Ten’s more than a little okay with that. He wants Yukhei too, after all. Very well might be in love with him, even.

* * *

“So are we still pretending you haven’t been gagging for it since America but for some reason aren’t saying anything?” says Yukhei the moment the door closes behind Ten, and Ten goes stumbling up against it against his wishes.

“What? No. Our entire band—” His voice cracks painfully in the middle of that sentence and that’s _really unfair_ ; Ten doesn’t deserve to go through puberty all over again just because the guy he’s totally been seeing is going through it three years late. “—Is in the dorm with us,” he finishes finally.

There’s a pause, and then a very helpful thudding on the wall from the bedrooms next to them.

Ten is thankful for the support but horrified to learn how thin the walls are. “Oh my God,” he says involuntarily. “You—but I blew you, yesterday.”

There’s more thumping, sounding considerably less supportive and much more “Please, God, my ears.”

Then Sicheng shouts, almost fully audible, “Can we _please_ just switch rooms properly and stop pretending? I know you’re not using my bed but I’m still doing so much extra laundry just in case; Manager-hyung is going to kill me!”

Ten sinks down onto the floor and stares mindlessly ahead for a few moments, before lifting his head. “Right,” he says. “Well we’ve been scarring them for months now, anyway, so.” He shrugs—the chorus of thudding is even more extreme this time. “Oh, go bother the rest of our labelmates,” Ten shouts at the lot of them. “It’ll be good practice for your Korean!”

More banging—

“We’re going to Shanghai tomorrow,” Yukhei points out helpfully, but he’s gotten on the bed and taken his shirt off, so clearly, he’s on board.

Ten stares at the long slope between his pectorals, the crease of skin at the top of his stomach that won’t go away no matter how thin and ripped he is, and swallows. “Hwang Yukhui,” Ten manages with perfect diction. “There is never a reason not to practice your Korean.”

Yukhei slumps back against his bed with a groan. “That was one time,” he says, thinking about the truly astonishing color their teacher had gone when she figured out what phrase Yukhei was butchering to end up propositioning her. “And I was tired—I have an accent.”

Ten raises an eyebrow at him, then toes off his socks.

Yukhei stares at the slips of fabric on the floor and then he’s the one swallowing, more than a few times. “Right,” he says. “Go bother Dream!” he calls at the walls. “Or 127! Ten-hyung hasn’t let me fuck him in _months_.”

“Oh my God!” Ten hears YangYang say. “Kun-gege! Aren’t you older than both of them?”

But moments later Ten can hear the thud of steps as their entire band vacates the premises, one of them pausing outside the door to shove condoms under it.

Ten stares down at them and the loud, bright coloring proclaiming them omega tested, omega approved, and thinks he’s going to have to discipline fucking Hendery, and he’s not even their maknae. “Huh,” he says, feeling like he’s having an out-of-body experience. “He does know you can’t get _me_ pregnant.”

Yukhei’s eyes go dark for a split second and Ten decides he absolutely _cannot_ follow that line of thinking out to any sort of conclusion.

“Right, well—”

“Come here, Ten-hyung,” Yukhei says, and Ten swallows.

Yukhei is _shirtless_. On the bed. He’s not exactly the paradigm of come hither at the moment because he’s still clearly flushed from the accent teasing, but Ten can work with that. Ten strips out of his shirt and his pants and leaves on his boxers, fighting the urge to take up more time by folding everything, and settling for dropping it all in a pile with his socks.

Yukhei watches him the entire time with his eyes half-lidded, tongue curling around visibly behind his teeth; his mouth half open, his nostrils flaring. When Ten dips his head back and inhales he can more taste him than smell him, like the salt of the sea or ozone just before rain. Ten’s dizzy and weak-kneed, yet somehow still manages to get to him. He comes to a halting stop when his knees hit the edge of the mattress and stands, head spinning, staring down his nose at Yukhei.

Yukhei very helpfully settles two massive hands on Ten’s hips, rubbing at the bit of skin he can reach there. Ten was glad for the boxers, but now he’s not so sure.

“Hey,” whines Yukhei. “No fair. Unwrapping is my favorite part.”

And—oh, well. Maybe Ten’s glad he left them on regardless. “You—”

“Me,” Yukhei says helpfully, and then leans up so that he can kiss Ten. He’s not nearly tall enough to manage that without Ten helping him, but still Ten feels their height difference like a livewire, coiling through his lungs like a snake and then holding _tight_ , so Ten can hardly breathe, can hardly think can only bend down, down for kisses.

“Fuck,” he says when he pulls apart gasping. “I missed this—” Not that anything of what they’d been doing was bad, of course—Yukhei was stunning, relearning himself, reacquainting himself, begging for more fingers like it was some sort of contest. But this. Crawling half-naked into Yukhei’s lap and kissing him, holding him by the head and angling him this way and that way. Ten missed it. Being held.

“I think.” Yukhei’s eyes are huge, his mouth, red and swollen. “I think… later… for me to come—” He breaks off on a sucked in breath and his eyes flutter shut, shadows on his cheekbones that makes Ten’s heart pound.

“Let’s not—” Ten’s sentences are the ones that sounds poorly schooled and thready. “Get ahead of ourselves.”

Yukhei’s eyes go dark and lewd around the word “ahead” even though Ten’s just said it in Mandarin.

“You are the worst,” Ten tells him in English, and then kisses him some more for an excuse to close his eyes. Yukhei kisses him back with tongue and some teeth, humming and groaning and generally making a mess of everything; how is Ten supposed to keep his eyes shut through all that, when the man underneath him keeps shifting, and hissing, and losing more and more clothing. “Why were you wearing jeans?”

“I like jeans,” Yukhei says, even as he finally gets the offending clothing off and sends it sailing to join Ten’s on the floor. “I was with Mark—I like to wear clothes with Mark.”

Ten could honestly smack him, but he finds he’s far too busy growling, the noise rumbling in his chest involuntarily.

Yukhei stares up at him with his mouth open, eyes darting this way and that. “Are you—” he starts to say. “Jealous?”

“No,” Ten says hurriedly, wishing he had a shirt to tug over his head so he could hide. “No—you’re hearing things. Misunderstanding.”

“You are jealous,” Yukhei continues, like the holidays have come a full month early. “You are!” he crows. “Is it Mark, or just…” He tugs his lip between his teeth. “Is it _Mark_ ,” he says again, with emphasis this time. “What about…” He appears to be thinking this over with great pleasure. “Yuta-hyung.”

Ten’s teeth clack together.

“Taeyong-hyung?” Yukhei’s got stars in his eyes and both dimples in full bloom. “Jaehyun-hyung.”

Ten wonders if he should smack him.

“Johnny-hyung.” Yukhei cackles a little when that gets him a purposeful elbow to the side. “Oh, Johnny-hyung,” he says. “Is that because he acts like he’s an alpha or because he wants to be one?”

Ten reaches out and puts a hand just at the waistband of Yukhei’s boxers, practically daring him to continue his little info-gathering session. “Are you sure you want to finish that thought?” he asks.

Yukhei pouts, but lets the subject drop, shifting around on the bed so he’s better propped against the pillows and just staring up at Ten. His abs twitch under Ten’s fingers, but otherwise he stays completely still. “You’ve never been jealous about me before,” he says, because Ten it turns out is an utter asshole, and managed to keep his feelings hidden for three straight years.

“Now that,” Ten says, sliding his hand up despite the tiny groan of protest that gets him. “Is patently untrue.”

“Patently,” Yukhei repeats back with accented practice. He tips his head back even more, exposing the long line of his throat.

Ten’s teeth itch.

“Patently?”

“Patently.” Ten switches into Korean, which helps about zero percent, from the furrow developing between Yukhei’s brows. “I’m jealous about you all the time,” Ten mutters in barely passable Thai, before dipping back down to kiss him.

“I’m gonna make my mom teach me more than just hello and goodbye,” Yukhei says, as he always says, before Ten convinces him there are much better things to be doing with his mouth than speaking.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “What if you did that later?”

“What if your face was later?” Yukhei retorts, but he wiggles around and kicks off his boxers anyway. Then he’s naked, unevenly tanned and blushing all down his chest. Ten stares at him like he can see the difference, like he didn’t give himself permission to do so beforehand. Yukhei’s really not all that different, if he thinks about it, no less or more muscled, no less or more slim, no less or more Ten’s literal wet dream.

He’s just wired a bit differently now, as Ten had found out a few weeks ago, when he tried to get Yukhei off with just a blowjob. It was a pretty impressive blowjob, but it was still just a blowjob, and while Yukhei had never really been hugely for blowjobs (no man wasn’t at least a little though) because he really liked kisses, he’d never been quite so quiet about it. It wasn’t until Ten moved like he was going to put fingers in him that Yukhei had let out a shuddering moan, and then he was hot, and easy, and already panting for it, so Ten had given his jaw a break.

Ten wonders how that’ll work now, doing it this way around, but Yukhei’s not stopping, and Ten is sure as hell not about to stop. Not when he’s so hard he feels like it should hurt, and every other breath just makes it all the more worse, Yukhei’s arousal invading all his senses and ratcheting everything up several notches. “How do you people even do it?” Ten says, gasping, as Yukhei uses one hand to tug down Ten’s boxers to join his.

“Us people?”

“Jacobson’s,” Ten explains, leaning in to lick purposefully up against where he knows Yukhei’s sits, and then staying there when Yukhei gets a hand on him. “Fuck.” He hates how he sounds swearing in Mandarin. “What are you doing?”

“Mmm. I’ve never not been like this,” says Yukhei, giving Ten’s cock two, unfairly slow and all-encompassing strokes.

That’s right. Yukhei’s never even had a suppressed heat—of course he’s never gone through life knowing what it’s like for the less than blessed. It’s not like Ten’s scent blind but he’s never had as good a nose as his omega sister, as his alpha and omega bandmates, and it’s hard sometimes when it feels like he’s missing out on all these great jokes.

“Hey.” Yukhei lets go of Ten’s cock with a barely concealed whine. “You’re ignoring me.” 

“No—” Ten starts to protest. It’s starting to feel like the jokes were just… unnecessarily invasion information.

“I’ve got my whole hand on you,” Yukhei continues, spreading the aforementioned appendage out so that it covers pretty much all of Ten’s pelvis and lower abdomen. “And you’re ignoring me.”

“I—” Ten doesn’t want to admit he’d been thinking about the scent stuff, so he falls silent. “Missed having your fingers in me?” he tries instead. “You—you’re—you’ve got—” He gives his index finger a crook. “Better reach?”

Yukhei takes Ten’s hand in his own and tugs it close to his mouth so that he can kiss it, what the fuck, and Ten swallows.

“Xuxi. Yukhei.”

“Stop me,” Yukhei says, which is confusing, until he’s reaching down past his own leaking cock to his own leaking ass.

All the air goes punched out of Ten’s lungs on an embarrassing gasp. “ _Xuxi—_ ”

“Mmm,” Yukhei says, sinking one pointer in to the knuckle and hissing, eyes fluttering shut. “No lube.”

Ten hates living with teenagers. Ten hates living with omegas. Ten hates… whatever this is. “When should I—” Yukhei’s up to three fingers already and Ten can hardly speak, his lungs are working such overtime. “When should I stop you—ah—” Yukhei’s fucking flexed, spread the three fingers he’s got working into himself and twisted the wrist of his hand around a little so that he tugs, just so, on his rim, on the extra sensitive line of muscle there that always wants a knot, now. “Xuxi.” It’s a wonder Ten’s still producing words, let alone Yukhei’s name. “Yukhei. Lucas. Concentrate.”

“Mmm,” Yukhei purrs out again. “Depends.”

Ten feels more than a little out of control. “It depends? On what.”

Yukhei shifts around on the bed and lifts his hips like he’s going to try for adding his pinky. “On how many fingers you think you need after two months of nothing,” he explains carefully, opening his eyes and staring Ten down unflinchingly.

Ten doesn’t flinch.

Ten lifts his nose in the air and manages with as much dignity as possible, “Fuck you; I put things in my ass all the time.”

Then there’s a beautiful, awful pause, where Yukhei’s still got three fingers in his ass and his hips twitching, and Ten is still sprawled mostly in a heap just between his knees watching him.

“O—kay,” says Yukhei. “So not four?”

“No,” Ten gets out, trying not to get distracted by all the visuals. “No—three’s fine—” He breaks off on a gasp when Yukhei hauls him forward and rearranges him, keeping him straddling his lap but moving with him so that he can drag warm, wet fingers down Ten’s side, over his hip bones, into the crease of his ass. “What— _Yukhei—_ ” It’s one whole finger before Ten can think, long, and thick and curled just right so that Ten can’t fucking _see_.

“You said three.” He’s so fucking smug and sure of himself.

“I said—wait,” Ten lies, because he said nothing of the sort. “I—it’s been—” _Two months_ , he holds back. _So long. Why was I such an idiot? How could I think I’d lose this?_ “Slowly,” Ten gets out. “I—please—”

Yukhei slips a second finger in alongside the next, the stretch a pleasant burn, the lube something Ten is pointedly _not_ _thinking of_. “Are you jealous because you think I’d actually go after one of our idiot bandmates?” The asshole punctuates his question with a press of both fingers right up against Ten’s prostate, and Ten sucks great lungfuls of air into his mouth and moans, both hands grappling for Yukhei’s shoulders so he can hold on.

“N—no,” Ten gets out. Another press. Another wave of pleasure so good Ten doesn’t know why he thought he could give it up for something so stupid as “biology says you shouldn’t want this.”

“Then why—”

“You’re mine,” Ten manages finally, realizing he’s semi-blacked out most of the third and hint of four fingers, Yukhei rubbing the head of his cock up against Ten’s leg and eyeing the condoms Ten left on the floor with one eye. “I’m allowed to be—jealous.”

Yukhei pulls his fingers free but doesn’t slide home, mouth quirked up at the corners. “Only if you get to be mine too,” he says. “And I don’t have to be jealous of just alphas.” He slides in on one, even stroke, a little stronger than Ten was expecting and with surprisingly little ache—Yukhei’s always been very well hung, which was part of the reason everyone was expecting him to pop a knot and not turn up all heat-fevered in the first place. Ten’s not a fucking quitter and he’s taken real life _knots_ , but still. It has been almost a month. “I get to be jealous of everybody.”

“I’m jealous of everybody too,” Ten says more than a little nonsensically. “You’re only _mine—_ ”

“And you’re only _mine_ ,” Yukhei parrots back to him, working up a proper rhythm now.

This isn’t going to work once Ten goes over and Yukhei starts begging for Ten to do something—Ten thinks he should ask—fuck, well maybe even just Changmin-hyung, as horrific as that sounds to him, because there’s got to be someone who’s with an omega and going around letting them fuck them and like—there’s got to be something. Maybe Yukhei’s just weirder than other omegas.

“You’re distracted,” Yukhei says, panting and staring to sweat in earnest now.

“No—” Ten tries to protest but can’t manage it, because Yukhei is moving to flip them anyway. “No I just—oh _fuck—_ ” It pulls when they tilt over, Ten’s hips spreading wide as Yukhei bowls him straight onto his back, one hand holding tight to the back of his neck, classic almost kabedon, but without the wall, or the noise, or the—fuck—girl. “Was thinking about _you_ ,” Ten continues helplessly, as the angle changes and Yukhei really starts to get into it, kissing and nipping at whatever bit of neck on Ten he can reach, tracing his ears with tongue, tugging on his too-short to properly pull hair, _fucking him_ , in steady, one-two-three bursts. “When you— _ah—_ ”

“Don’t need fingers,” Yukhei says into Ten’s hairline. “Don’t need your hand.”

And that’s… terrifying but also an image and Ten’s wires are all crossed because Yukhei’s got his cockhead rubbing up against Ten’s prostate on each and every fuck in and Ten’s so close he could fucking _scream_.

“Don’t need—” Ten thinks Yukhei’s actually going to try to use some horrifyingly medical terminology, but thankfully he gets distracted by the truly breathless gasp that comes out of Ten’s mouth as he comes, untouched and starved for it, on the next one-two-three-oh _God_. “Anything but you,” Yukhei finishes, and then really finishes, forehead pressed right up against Ten’s forehead, both hands rubbing all over his sides.

He doesn’t, Ten realizes as feeling starts to come back into him simultaneously with consciousness, and he convinces his legs to untense and come down from where they’d wrapped painfully around Yukhei’s hips.

“No you don’t,” he says finally, as they both start to get their breathing and bearings back. It comes out breathless and more than a little awestruck. “Huh—” He hisses to a stop as Yukhei shifts around still inside of him, stuffed full and already certain the flight to Shanghai tomorrow is going to be miserable.

“I just need you,” Yukhei says, the sentimental sap, and Ten leans up to kiss him some more until he’s able to get himself under control. They stay curled together like puzzle pieces for a long while, until the bed starts to cool and get sticky, and Ten is seriously considering risking Sicheng actually committing murder and just going to get in his clean, perfectly unruffled bed instead.

Eventually Yukhei pulls out with a hiss and Ten falls back against the bed with a well satisfied sigh, before he remembers why condoms are a good thing, even when the person you’re with hasn’t fucked anyone else and you’re one of the lucky ones who can’t get pregnant if you take it up the ass.

Yukhei doesn’t say anything but he passes Ten the washcloth he keeps by the side of his bed anyway. Really Ten should shower, because who knows how long that washcloth has been there, but fuck if he’s getting up now. He settles in close to Yukhei’s side and lets out a little hum, content, and sleepy, and still panting a little. Fuck, but it’s good. Yukhei tugs the covers up over them so that no one gets cold, and Yukhei’s always had the best taste in pillows.

Ten feels warm and loved and happy, and it’s such a welcome reprieve to the past few weeks’ stress that he can’t help but relish in it, especially since it’s not going to be fleeting. He’s going to have this for as long as he wants and maybe then some, if Yukhei wanting to call him informally means anything at all.

Ten smiles, then hides it in the skin underneath Yukhei’s arm.

They might sleep, for a little bit.

“What were you and Taemin-hyung talking about?” says Yukhei later, once Ten’s finally feeling up to keeping his eyes open for more than a few seconds.

“Oh,” Ten says, licking at his lips and then shuddering when he can taste Yukhei all over them. He stares up at the ceiling and tries really hard to think back. “He was giving me advice about you, actually.”

Yukhei lifts his head off the pillow and stares at him. “Me?”

“Relationship advice,” Ten says, because he might as well go all in and get the teasing out of the way now. (He has to see Taemin-hyung and Jongin-hyung and even Mark in Dallas next week anyway.) “Cause like… you were driving me crazy.”

Yukhei seems pleased about that, and then concerned. “Because I’m—”

“Not what I expected,” Ten finishes for him, trying to cut it all off at the pass.

It doesn’t work; Yukhei frowns harder. “Would it have been better if I was an alpha?” he asks finally.

Ten… won’t admit it, but the combination of the sense memory of Yukhei putting his hands all over him and fucking him long and hard to completion without so much as a hand on him only moments earlier, and the added bonus of knowing what it feels like to have a knot pressing into him—it’s a lot.

It leaves Ten quiet for a long time, while Yukhei worries and worries at his bottom lip.

“I think no, ultimately,” Ten decides finally because Yukhei deserves a real answer. “But I’d probably have been much less upset about it in the beginning because there wouldn’t be like a… I mean beta people can get off on knots too.” He’s embarrassed and he hates it. So, he’s been with alphas. So, he had a thing for Lee Taeyong. So, nothing ever came from that and half the time the ones Ten picked up were assholes who seemed to get off on getting on making Ten feel inadequate.

So, Yukhei is looking at Ten in this knowing, jealous sort of way that makes something tingle warmly in Ten’s belly. So, what?

“I’m just like—worried,” says Ten, instead of any of that. “That I’m not enough for you.”

Yukhei lifts a brow and opens his mouth.

“Shut up, you literal adolescent,” Ten interrupts him before he can say something truly appalling. “You know what I mean.” 

Yukhei knocks their bare shoulders together on the bed, then rolls so he can twine their ankles together under the covers. Ten knows Donghae-hyung and Eunhyuk-hyung have got their mating marks on their ankles, and he shivers. “But I’m twenty-one.”

“Only barely,” retorts Ten instantly. “You act like you’re ten.”

Yukhei gets that look in his eyes that precedes truly horrible jokes.

“Oh, fuck off,” Ten says. “Taemin-hyung said I was overthinking things,” he offers like an olive branch. “Cause like, you’re still here, and all, so clearly you want me.”

Yukhei’s lips curve up in the corners but he doesn’t need another reminder not to be an idiot. He reaches out with an arm and drags Ten in for a hug, manhandling until he gets exactly what he wants—Ten the little spoon, Yukhei practically smothering him with his chest, and Yukhei’s nose, buried in tight next to Ten’s ear. “Yeah, well,” says Yukhei, into that spot. “He was right, Taemin-hyung.” He still goes into Korean in the middle of his sentences whenever he wants to talk about their Korean bandmates, because it doesn’t work the same in Mandarin. “You were overthinking it.”

Ten should protest.

“You overthink a lot of things,” Yukhei continues. “It’s what makes you such a good performer.”

Suddenly Ten is having a hard time remembering how to breathe, let alone speak. “You’re just—” he starts to say. “How do you _do_ that?”

Yukhei shifts in the bed a little so that they’re staring each other in the dark, all near-black eyes and freshly shampooed hair. The teal is coming the moment they’re released from WayV duties and sent packing to Texas. “Do what?”

“Be so calm about everything. Make everything seem so simple.”

Yukhei almost shrugs, then seems to think better of it. “I’m not,” he says. “It’s not.” He pauses. “You are, though,” he says quietly.

Ten lifts his head to better look at him, honestly thinking about going for the light.

“You and me,” Yukhei continues. “We’re just… we just are,” he says finally. “We make sense.” He gets a hopeful, tiny little smile in the corner of his mouth, one perfect dimple poking into existence on the side where Ten’s heart is. “It only has to be complicated if you make it.”

Ten could just kiss him he’s so silly, so easy, so unaffected by it all.

“And it’s 2019, so, there are toys for that,” Yukhei finishes, and Ten reaches out and punches him.

“Ah, so you were eavesdropping,” he says, flipping into Korean so he can lord the vocabulary over Yukhei.

Yukhei just raises one brow at him, licks his lips, and says rather seriously. “Well you were saying my name a lot, Ten-ah.”

Ten’s heart… stutters.

He thinks again of that conversation only a month ago, when all of this started, when Yukhei was freshly presented and so steadfastly blasé about it all. When Ten was no less in knots than he is now, but somehow so much younger, so much more in turmoil.

 _We’re not soulmates_ , Ten said.

 _If we were could I call you Ten-ah?_ Yukhei said.

Yukhei’s got a soft, nervous glint in his eye, like he’s shouted a secret or shown his hand.

Ten decides he can live without mentioning it. “It’s rude to eavesdrop, Huang Xuxi,” he says. “Wong Yukhei. Lucas.” That last one comes out in unison, Yukhei leaning in close so that they’re sharing the same air.

They kiss until Ten’s head is spinning and he has to pull away before he gets too dizzy to function.

“You’re going to be impossible about this from now on, though,” he realizes.

“Oh absolutely,” Yukhei tells him pleasantly. “You love me,” he says. “Even though I’m loud, and stupid, and only pretending to be bad at Korean.”

Ten glares at him even though he knows he isn’t serious, because to do anything else would be to show how very much those three words have affected him.

“I love you too,” Yukhei says simply, like an arrow straight to Ten’s heart. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

Ten should just end this conversation now in the way of other bedtime activities, never mind they’ve already done that once before. Yukhei always gets sleepy afterwards and he’d be much less likely to tease. Ten doesn’t. Ten says, “Even though I’m—” and can’t finish like some sort of train wreck.

“Perfect?” Yukhei finishes. “The best dancer in SM barring Yunho-sunbaenim, my new best friend?”

“You’ve spoken once without my help,” Ten mutters pointlessly, cheeks going pink despite himself.

“Too good for this world—a—a—cinnamon roll—” Yukhei’s gone seamlessly into English with barely a hint of an accent. “Too precious for this world.” He makes like he’s going to take Ten by the cheeks.

Ten leans back in the bed away from him, scowling, but still blushing. “Shut up,” he says.

“Ten-hyung,” Yukhei says. “Ten-hyung, Ten-hyung, Ten-hyung.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Ten says dutifully back to him in English.

“I don’t _care_ that you’re just a beta. I don’t _think_ you’re just a beta. You’re not just anything to me—you’re Ten-hyung.” Yukhei’s fucking smiling at him, like literal sunshine and his words are like a balm to Ten’s soul; it’s like he’s found the beautiful-scary, messed up knot of insecurity right in the middle of Ten that he hides fiercely and then cultivates grimly in turn. Yukhei tells him, “I don’t care that you’re not what I’m supposed to want—I want you anyway—” in not so many words, and Ten holds his breath.

He lets it out in one great gust. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Good.”

Yukhei grins at him with full dimples. “Now come back to bed?”

“I literally haven’t gone anywhere,” Ten says, but rolls further into the circle of his arms anyway. They fall asleep like that, wrapped all up in each other, and then they wake up like that, to Sicheng shrieking like he’s died because he tripped on their clothes and then on the box of condoms, because it turns out at some point in the middle of the night the rest of WayV snuck back into the dorm, and Hendery straight up refused to let Sicheng borrow clothing. They fly to Shanghai and finish up their week of Chinese promotions, before regrouping with Mark and Taeyong to fly to Dallas.

“So come on, let me see it,” Mark says in English the moment they meet up at the airport, and for two horrifying moments Ten thinks he’s talking about something like _claim marks_ , until Yukhei is glancing around the empty VIP lounge and then pulling off the giant bucket hat a stylist plopped on his freshly dyed hair that evening.

He stayed longer in Shanghai than the rest of WayV for solo schedules, but Ten lives with him, so he’s already seen it. Mark and Taeyong haven’t, and this is the first time Yukhei’s been given any fantasy colors.

“Ooooh,” Mark says obligingly, even as Taeyong rolls his eyes in the background because, “Kai-hyung has blue hair too, Mark, please—”

“I like it,” Mark says, ignoring Taeyong. “It suits you.”

“You think?” Yukhei ducks his head, ruffles his bangs, and then tries out a finger heart.

“Heart-melting,” Mark confirms supportively. “I almost miss mine.”

“Bet you don’t miss the cold showers,” Taeyong says sarcastically, and Ten finally looks at him.

He’s seated across from them with one leg over the other and he’s still wearing a hat and both masks and he stares at Ten, earrings glinting under the harsh airport lighting.

Ten stares at him with one brow raised, taking in the silver-grey-blue tipped bits of hair showing above his eyebrows and behind his ears. “Are you jealous?” He can’t quite believe it could be so, their fearless, talented leader, who’s had hair so many colors sometimes Ten wonders what the showers in the 127 dorm look like, jealous of Yukhei for being colored to match a popsicle. He kind of matches Taeyong’s collar, Ten notices suddenly. 

Taeyong stares back at him and doesn’t lower his facemask either. “Of Lucas? No.” Immediately Taeyong becomes consumed with his phone, hat concealing the rest of his face from their view.

Ten is… not going to be touching that _at all_. He focuses instead on continuing to switch his brain back out of Mandarin and into English, in time to be one half of their fluent members. They’ll have a translator because neither he nor Mark could do that job and perform and be entertaining full stop, but it doesn’t hurt to turn the gears. Ten would hate to forget a word and cycle through four other options before ending up with even the Korean.

SuperM’s other fluent one is hanging almost upside down halfway off the back of his seat so he can critique Yukhei’s choice in pre-flight beverages, loudly and with great glee.

“That one! No. That one! The pink!” For some reason the word “pink” is particularly hilarious to Yukhei and Mark both and they dissolve into giggles.

“No caffeine,” Ten tells them both loudly without looking away from his mental picture of their show setlist, reviewing choreography and trying out potential show MC. “You both need to be able to sleep. We have a show tomorrow.”

Immediately Ten winces—WayV has taken great pleasure in tormenting him and Yukhei both any time anyone mentions sleeping, while Sicheng practically gets up on whatever raised surface they’re near and launches into a heartfelt plea for room rearranging. It hasn’t trained Ten off of being slightly nagging and overbearing, but it’s getting there.

There’s a beat, but Yukhei comes obediently back over to Ten’s side and Mark doesn’t take the easy opportunity to mention things.

But then, after a few moments of silence where the airport announces another flight’s boarding, Taeyong says primly from where he’s still buried in his phone, “So how are things with you two—”

“We’re fine,” Ten says loudly before Yukhei can even say anything. He tugs the mask off of his face and reaches up to mess with his bangs, fighting the urge to fan himself. “Everything’s fine. Everyone really loves ‘Moonwalk,’ and no one spoke Mandarin when we were performing on the Korean shows.”

Yukhei is looking at him oddly but Ten’s too busy staring down Taeyong, who finally lifts his head and slips off the outermost mask. He leaves the black one on, looking almost like his stage costume for his solo set. He and Ten hold unbearable eye contact wherein they manage to have almost an entire conversation—on Ten’s side, it’s mostly just a lot of: is this really happening—oh he—he’s _serious_ , and not a lot of actual conversing, but Taeyong manages to convey both his grave disappointment in the fact that Ten’s risking his career and success on a relationship with someone colored blue like a popsicle and his grudging well wishes for whatever may come out of that relationship—in the way that only two people who promoted a single together can. “That’s great,” Taeyong says. “I’m really happy for you.”

Ten nods and turns frantically towards Mark. “So, have you ever been to Dallas before?”

He loses himself in Mark’s answer, really only peripherally aware of Yukhei until the other boy is leaning well into Ten’s personal space and practically breathing all over his neck and shoulder. “What are you doing?” Ten says in botched Mandarin out of the side of his mouth, not looking away from Mark, who’s flip-flopping languages like the professional he is.

“I hate it when you do that,” replies Yukhei, in significantly less botched Mandarin, but right up against Ten’s ear and making him wince.

Mark shoots them a slightly darkened look but turns when Taeyong prompts him for more cultural discussion—“They’ve got like… two football teams, hyung. It’s one state like. Seven times bigger than all of Korea—”

“Do what?” Ten isn’t going to give Yukhei the satisfaction of looking at him, even as he feels goosebumps start up and down his spine. They seem to be radiating out from where Yukhei’s breaths keep puffing out against the shell of Ten’s ear, and Ten really would rather expire.

“Have entire conversations with Taeyong-hyung that nobody else can understand,” says Yukhei in whining, perfectly understandable Korean, and for two seconds Taeyong is distracted from Mark long enough to fucking smirk, the fucker.

Ten finally turns to face Yukhei. “Lucas,” he says slowly. “We were literally just speaking Mandarin.”

Yukhei pouts at him. “That doesn’t count.”

Ten gapes at him. He turns to Mark and Taeyong. “Yah.” They both look at him, one significantly more curiously than the other. “Can either of you understand this?” the Mandarin comes out sharper than Ten usually likes, but it has the desired effect.

“Um… no,” replies Mark slowly in Korean. “Ten-hyung? Have you somehow forgotten which two languages we share?”

“No.” Ten points happily at Mark and then at Yukhei. “See? A full conversation that nobody else can understand.”

Yukhei doesn’t seem appeased. “Doesn’t count,” he says. “WayV can understand—”

“WayV aren’t here, though?”

“Anyway it’s stupid—I’m stupid—”

“You are not stupid,” Ten snaps, in harsh, badly attempted Cantonese this time, because he caved and downloaded an app on his phone that morning, staring up at the ceiling of the dorm and thinking… sentimental, stupid things. (Guess it’s real, now. Guess Ten should probably start to invest some time and effort into like… children’s names, or something. Fuck.)

Yukhei stares back at him with his mouth fallen open, an honest to God blush starting to stripe across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “You—”

“Wong Yukhei.” Ten uses the Cantonese pronunciation of his name so that he can watch the way his throat jumps, how his pupils dilate. (So… lessons from Hendery the newly appointed _Cantonese teacher_ then, clearly. Ten can be on that immediately.) “Are you—” Ten breaks off, like he can’t believe. “Are you jealous?” It’s like déjà vu, only not quite. More like getting transported into an alternate universe, or just maybe flipping lines. Ten’s never had people be jealous on his behalf before. Or at least not like this. Well. Five minutes ago Taeyong, but that was different—Ten winces, looking quickly at the man in question, and finding his friend staring back at him with a pleased, knowing smile dancing behind his eyes. He doesn’t lower the facemask but Ten doesn’t need him to, just stares back with his heart thumping. He feels… funny. Weightless. Airy.

Yukhei is staring at Ten, still blushing. “No.” He’s reverting to monosyllables, tugging at the hair on the back of his neck and then finally pulling back on the bucket hat.

“You are,” Ten crows, because he can’t help himself and he’s practically floating on the ceiling at the thought. This is fun. Ten likes this. Ten could work with this. Ten should—Ten should assure Yukhei that there is absolutely no reason for him to be jealous—

“So what about the women,” says Taeyong loudly and in English, turning his full attention to Mark.

Mark had just been about to take a drink of whatever concoction Yukhei bought him, and he somehow manages not to spill it all over himself. “What?”

“In Dallas.” Ten has to hand it to Taeyong; he has deadpan down _pat_. “What about the women?”

For two seconds Ten thinks Taeyong is actually serious, but then he turns his attention back towards Yukhei, who’s looking at their leader with something close to appreciation in his eyes.

And what?

No.

Ten opens his mouth.

“Erm.” Mark looks like he wishes he hadn’t been trapped in Singapore doing 127 promotions and could have instead flown yesterday with Baekhyun-hyung, Jongin-hyung, and Taemin-hyung. “Well they… exist?”

“Wow,” says Taeyong almost simultaneously with Yukhei, and then they look at each other and fucking smile, Taeyong finally removing the facemask so he’s less of a serial killer, and more like the nervous kid Ten was happy to almost debut alongside.

Ten has no idea what’s even happening anymore.

“Have we left Korea without my knowing?” says Mark loudly. “Are we in the—the Twilight Zone?”

Ten snorts despite himself and then schools his features when Mark looks at him.

Mark points. “You don’t count because you’re basically scent blind—” He breaks off and almost coughs. “Oh, gross, Lucas, please.”

Yukhei just tilts his head at him and Taeyong seems to shift nervously.

“I hate being an adult,” Mark decides finally, and then sinks back against the chair cushions. “Hyung,” he addresses one of the managers with them.

Ten startles, because he’d somehow forgotten they were all still there.

“Why is it every year I get older?”

Manager-hyung doesn’t even look up from his phone. “I don’t know, Minhyung-ah.”

“Oh—no—don’t call me that,” Mark whines some more, and then sinks even further into the chair.

Ten watches him with an almost morbid curiosity. “I think we broke him,” he tells Yukhei in Mandarin.

“Yeah,” Yukhei comes back instantly. He brightens, switching to Korean: “Do you think they’ll give me his solo?”

Taeyong reaches across Ten so he can nudge him. “Yah,” he says. “You already have an awesome solo.”

Ten thinks about Yukhei in the sparkly, orange, cropped jacket thing, and swallows. “Yeah,” he says.

“Hyung,” Mark whines.

“Minhyung-ah,” Manager-hyung replies.

“Our flight’s boarding,” Taeyong interrupts them all helpfully, then laughs when Mark practically vaults out of the chair towards the VIP lounge doors.

“Finally!” He sounds even more like a little kid, especially because of the English. “I call shotgun!”

“You can’t call shotgun on a plane,” Ten tells him, standing and following after him more sedately. “Especially when we’ve all got assigned seats.”

“You’d still trade someone to sit with Lucas,” Mark returns immediately, then looks incredibly sorry for himself. “Truce?”

Ten looks down his nose at him. “I’m still not sure what we’re even fighting over,” he says as snottily as possible. “As good as scent blind, remember?”

Mark winces. “Hyung…”

Ten laughs and then shakes his head. “It’s fine, Mark-ah. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.” He grins. “Not like it’s affected my chances at all.”

Mark stares back at him with his mouth wide, before turning beseechingly to Taeyong, of all people. Like Taeyong’s going to help him.

“You walked right into that one,” their leader says, before repositioning both facemasks and parading past them and onto the plane.

“He’s right,” says Yukhei, following. “I’m a catch.” He doesn’t do anything drastic like kiss Ten on the cheek, but as he passes Ten gets a whiff of him, and oh, maybe he should be apologizing to Mark after all.

“Oh you should,” Mark says, with a pained, long suffering look between them. Then he presses in close so he can hug Ten, too quick for Ten to really process. “I’m happy for you both, though.”

Ten is left staring after all of them, these people who’ve somehow all become the brothers he’s always wanted—barring Yukhei, who absolutely is not like a brother _at all_. He feels so happy he could probably cry. This is his life. These people are Ten’s family.

He gets on the plane.

The first thing Taemin-hyung says to him when he sees them at the hotel is, “Not until April, you fuckers,” and Ten amends the statement. These people aren’t Ten’s family. These people are more like—devils—

“April?” Jongin-hyung says brightly, coming to rest an arm around Taemin-hyung’s shoulders. “Isn’t that when you promised you’d take our Ten-ah sex toy shopping—”

“Wash out your mouth,” Baekhyun-hyung adds, coming to fill out the trio and holding one overdramatic hand to his mouth. “I didn’t raise you to be like this.”

“No sex toy talk in front of the baby,” Taeyong interrupts all of them, walking past with both hands sheltering a confused, yet still smiling Yukhei. “Especially you, Ten, you pervert.”

“I—what—”

“He is _my age_ ,” agrees Mark, aghast, and reaches up to cover Yukhei’s eyes.

Ten stares around at all of them. “You—”

“Is it better if I tell you I always want it?” pipes Yukhei from underneath his 127 sandwich, and they both draw back from him with loud gasps.

“Lucas,” Taeyong says.

“Lucas-hyung,” agrees Mark in a rare sign of deference.

Yukhei only has eyes for Ten, who comes to stand in front of him haltingly when he beckons. He looks down where Yukhei’s caught him on the wrist, then glances up and between all the members’ faces. “Lucas,” Ten says, the name feeling like rubber in his mouth. “Did you—”

“Plan this?” Yukhei says immediately in Mandarin. “No. They’re all assholes—”

“Hey, we lived with EXO M for years,” interjects Baekhyun-hyung, but he’s laughing.

“They love you,” Yukhei continues. “Ten-hyung.”

Ten kind of wants to. Hug them all. He settles for just laughing, huffed out and confused. “I—”

“Not as much as me, but—”

“Oh, come on, _Lucas_!” shouts Mark, but Taeyong has already taken him by the arm and started to drag him away.

“Minhyung,” Ten hears him say as they round a corner to find their rooms. “We have got to get you retested. Maybe we can get you on some medication—”

“Don’t _call me that—_ ”

Ten is left in a near empty hallway with Wong Yukhei’s oversized fingers linked with his, while the larger than life sunbaes he always looked up to smile at him like proud parents.

“Have fun, you two,” Baekhyun-hyung says.

“Use protection,” Jongin-hyung adds.

“Remember we have to do a full concert tomorrow,” Taemin-hyung finishes, and then they all take off, laughing.

Ten turns back to face Yukhei and decides the safest course of action is to close his mouth.

“How much of that did you understand?” he asks him finally. “Be honest.”

“All the important bits,” says Yukhei, with a pointed look at Ten’s mouth, and Ten feels heat in his cheeks and has to shut his eyes. “So—only me, then—”

“You,” Yukhei agrees. “Now come on. We’re still new enough that SM doesn’t want to pay for solo rooms.”

“I am older than you,” Ten protests. “If anything, it should be you and Mark.”

Yukhei looks back at him, utterly unbothered. “You’d rather I share with Mark?” he says. “Okay—Hey, Mark Lee—”

Ten slaps a hand over his mouth, flushing, and then drops it down between them without looking. It’s so very, very easy to interlace their hands. Ten walks, through the halls of their hotel in Dallas, and listens to Yukhei go over all their upcoming schedules, hums whenever he asks for input on potential MC conversations.

“Do you really like my hair?” Yukhei asks right before they get to the room and realize they’re going to have to go harass a bandmate for the keycards. “It’s not—too blue?” He sounds shy, and honestly curious, and nothing like the persona he puts out for everyone else and then some.

Ten swallows. “Yeah, it looks good,” he says. For some reason his throat feels all stuffed. That’s not good. They have a concert. “It’s going to bleed like hell, though.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yukhei agrees. “I saw the sink when they washed it the first time and it looked like one of those energy drinks.” He pauses. “But, uh—”

“You look good, Xuxi,” Ten says quietly, giving him a tiny smile. “But I mean, I love you, so.” He shrugs. “I’m always going to think you look good.”

The answering smile he gets in return is enough to light the entire venue, Ten thinks. He gives Yukhei’s hand a squeeze. They turn from the door. “I love you too, even though you were kind of stupid—”

“Yes, thank you—”

“I’m just saying. One whole month wasted for nothing—”

“You are literally a _teenager—_ ”

“Not anymore, Ten-hyung, keep up—”

In the beginning, Ten told himself it was only until Yukhei presented.

He was lying.

There are worse things, it turns out.

**Author's Note:**

> HAHAHAH omfg I'm so afraid.
> 
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